


Baekhyun's Boardinghouse for Male Monsters

by GinForInk



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Blood, Devils, Eventual Smut, Ghosts, Halloween, Humor, M/M, Monster Fuckers Lite, Not Vegan, Past Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Sirens, Slow Burn, Spooky Housemates, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Bites, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, magic shenanigans, vampire typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-31 15:43:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 63,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21148154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinForInk/pseuds/GinForInk
Summary: Six spooky boys and one normal guy in the haunted house at the end of the street.





	1. SMonster SMansion

Mark decided on his apartment based solely on vibe. Never mind that the old house was a thirty-minute walk to school in the best of weather. Never mind that six people already lived there. Never mind that the rent was slightly higher than he’d been planning on and he didn’t get his own bathroom. Never mind that he’d have to make his potions late at night when no one in the house would come into the kitchen.

Because the house he’d just put down his security deposit on was a towering three-story colossus of a Victorian estate at the tallest point on a hill before the old forest began. 

When he’d first visited the circular tower, twelve-foot ceilings, and no-doubt antique wallpaper had failed to impress him more than the enormous oak in the backyard and the worn wraparound porch crawling with Virginia creeper. It looked like a real witch’s house. Like a real, actually powerful, actual witch who was actually in touch with her magic center and communicated dangerously with the world’s unseen powers. He imagined himself burning spells on the back lawn and nearly drooled. 

On moving night, he started getting second thoughts. “Yeah, I’m glad you found us,” the landlord said. His name was Baekhyun and he had pink hair, but his presence was distinctly cold. His voice made Mark want to say ‘yes, sir,’ as sweet and polite as possible and do whatever he was told. Baekhyun spoke in quick Korean that Mark could barely keep up with. “I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting that room rented out.”

“Is it because of the woods?” Mark asked. He pulled out the box labeled in runes out of Baekhyun’s car and tried to hide the spell circle against his chest. “They’re uhh…old.”

Baekhyun nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I mean, um, no, I’d think the woods would be a plus. It’s…you know, I just prefer certain kinds of people.”

They stepped into the kitchen just in time to see an extremely tall, extremely lanky boy with hands like Frankenstein’s monster attempt to flambé something in a frying pan. He let out an unearthly shriek and let the pan go with a clatter, jumping back with his arms over his head. The flames burned nearly to the fan for a few seconds and then faded away. Baekhyun snorted. “Lucas, this is Mark. Mark, Lucas.” As Lucas gave a giant smile and a wave of his enormous paw, Baekhyun led Mark towards the sweeping staircase.

On the way, they passed a cavernous living room with two other gorgeous men lounging on a couch, both pale and angular with perfect skin and piercing eyes. Red velvet drapes dropped from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. That was the first thing that gave Mark pause. 

“Ten and Taeyong,” Baekhyun said, not indicating which was which. They both waved and got up curiously. Mark almost dropped his box trying to wave back. “Yeah, there’s just not much of a relevant population around here,” Baekhyun said. 

Mark had really begun to suspect Baekhyun only accepted other pretty young Asian men into his house. “Uh, yeah. Kind of hard to find in small town Virginia,” he said. “Maybe you’d have more luck in the city.”

“Probably,” Baekhyun said, shrugging. At the top of the stairs, more massive velvet drapes dropped to the floor over the hallway window at the back of the house. Shoes clicked down the stairs from the next floor and the most intimidatingly gorgeous young Asian yet stepped off the landing, skin unnaturally white, eyes glittering. “This is Taemin,” Baekhyun said. 

“Lovely to meet you, Mark” Taemin said, leaning gracefully back with a hand poised on his hip like he’d been caught mid-photoshoot. “I’m glad you’re here.” 

“Do I really fit the requirements?” he squeaked. 

“Oh yes. You do,” Taemin said, which gave Mark a very warm, proud feeling. He still wasn’t quite sure he held a candle to all these beauties. 

Mark’s room on the second floor was supposedly one of the smallest in the house, but it was big enough for a queen size bed, desk, armoire, and plenty of floor space to spare. He set his box of potion ingredients down on the desk and went to grab more. He ran into Lucas coming up carrying his box of mineral and rock spell components like it was nothing.

“Oh! Careful with those!”

“No problem!” Lucas said with a killer smile. “I got it.”

“That’s not—they’re just, um, delicate. Careful.” 

“We good, we good,” Lucas said and traipsed past. 

After several more trips, Mark sat down on his suitcase full of clothes—mostly black—and took a deep breath. Now he needed everyone to leave so he could hide the sigils and make himself a nice restorative tea.

“I need to warn you,” Baekhyun said. “I’ve been so desperate for renters that I had to take on a normie, but he’s chill. He’ll be back from work soon. You just gotta tolerate him I guess. And don’t let him know about…all of this?” 

“All of what?” Mark said. “A normie? Like a white boy or something?” 

“What?” Baekhyun said sharply.

“Like, um, he’s not a pretty ahh…what’s a normie?” 

Baekhyun narrowed his eyes, and then very deliberately lifted the coat Mark had been using to hide the obvious magic circles on his desk boxes and checked them out. “Like a normie,” he said, turning back around. “Like a regular human.” 

Mark sat up straight so fast he slipped off his suitcase and fell on the floor. 

“Mark, you got this room because you’re a witch. You’re in a house with three vampires, a werewolf, and a siren.”

“Oh shit!” he said.

It turned out the normie was also an inhumanly attractive young Asian man, which left Mark as potentially the only unattractive, or at least regularly attractive young Asian man in the house. Mark walked out of his room in only his Batman pajama pants and a threadbare t-shirt in the morning and ran into a bronze Adonis of a man in a three-piece suit just leaving the room across the hall. 

His jaw cut like a sword stroke in the morning light through the open curtains. He looked up from his phone and gave Mark a look up and down. “Are you Mark?” he said. 

Mark stuttered to life. “Uh, uh-huh, yuh, I’m…” He realized the man was holding a very strong-looking hand out. Mark switched his basket of toiletries from his right hand to his left and shook it. The guy leaned in closer for a better shaking distance, a breath of subtle cologne drifting with him. 

“I’m Jongin. Lovely to meet you. I’m glad to have a new neighbor.”

“Yeah, yeah. Good to meet you too.”

“Empty rooms just make this house creepier after all.”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” 

Jongin smiled. Mark’s breath left his lungs with rude abruptness. “I’ve got work today but I’ll see you later,” he said. “Oh, and could you close those curtains for me? I know we’re not supposed to leave them open, but I can’t resist sunlight in the morning.” 

Once Mark had cleaned himself up and overcome his shock, he dressed in his usual black ensemble. He even braved his felted hat with a little point like a modern witch’s hat. Lucas sat at the big slab of wood that made the table in the breakfast nook off the kitchen, a cup of tea steaming in front of him, blinking sleepily out at the morning. “Morning,” he said. “Sleep well?” 

“As well as you can in a new place, I guess,” Mark said. 

Lucas smirked. “I saw you in the woods round about one in the morning.”

“What? Did you?” 

“Yeah, the full moon was a two days ago and my sleep cycle is all sorts of fucked up.” 

Mark dropped the act and sagged onto one of the benches at the table. “You’re the werewolf then? Got any more tea?” he grumbled. 

“In the pot. Don’t you want to make your own tea though?”

Mark shook his head. “Don’t want to drink more potions than I absolutely have to,” he said. “Magic is a balance in the body. Too much input at once can mess with my system. Supposedly. Never felt that. I try to pace it out and not have much all at once.”

Lucas nodded like he didn’t get it. 

“So what do you do?”

“School,” Lucas said. "I go to that college up the road.” 

“Oh neat.”

“You?”

“Also college. But like community college. And it’s for witches.” 

Lucas raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Got a lot of students there?” 

“Like, nine.”

They lapsed into comfortable silence. Another student in the house was just as relieving as more supernatural boys. Not everyone here was of the graduated-and-starting-their-life-already sort. 

The kitchen was one of those old ones that gave itself the illusion of space with cabinets of enormous height but was actually quite cramped. Mark itched to get a pot of herbs going on that antique stove. “So Jongin,” he started. 

Lucas sighed. “Yeah, it’s inconvenient, but he’s a good housemate. Like he’s just a really polite and friendly dude.”

“And hot,” Mark muttered. 

“What?”

“Hm?” 

Lucas tilted his head to the side like a puppy. 

“How’s living with vampires?” 

“They’re chill! They just went to bed a couple hours ago. Just before sunrise, you know. All three of them live in the tower area.” 

“Of course.”

“Ten—he’s the shorter one,” he said, noticing Mark’s questioning face. “I know they’re easy to mix up. Ten wanted to go hang out with you in the woods last night but we decided it’d probably be better to give you some space to settle in. We weren’t sure what witchy business you were getting up to back there.” 

“Oh, not much,” Mark said. “The usual. Just searching for the most powerful trees and getting the lay of the land. Like literally the lay lines and then also, like, traces of whatever’s, like, there. I’m not explaining this well.”

“I have no idea about any of that.” 

“Right.”

“So Baekhyun’s the siren?” 

“Mhm.”

“Are they like…active hunters? Any of them?” 

Lucas shook his head. “They all dance at the local clubs. I think there are, like, resources in town. We have a rule. No, uh, predation while we pay rent here. Baekhyun wants us off the radar.” 

Mark wrinkled his nose. He’d heard a little about the clubs where willing humans gathered in hope of bites. He’d had no clue there was one in town. 

“And things can get kind of intense when Baekhyun sings in the shower, but he hasn’t since Jongin moved in.” 

“And Jongin doesn’t know at all?” 

“Nope,” Lucas said. “He has no idea.” 

Mark heard the click of formal shoes in the entryway first and then noticed the way Taemin took a deep sniff and let his eyes roll back in his head a little. “Jongin’s home?” he mouthed to Taeyong, who nodded. Mark realized his pointy hat was still on his head and quickly tossed it under a couch cushion. Didn’t want the hot guy thinking he was some kind of freak. 

“Welcome home,” he said. 

Jongin flashed him that gleaming smile. “Thank you. Good to be here. It was a tough day.”

“What do you do?” 

Jongin strolled around the edge of the couch in his leather shoes. He had his blazer hung over his arm. Mark leaned on the arm of the couch to get closer until he felt his hat crunching under the cushions and sat up fast. 

“I’m in sales for a luxury kitchen-ware brand,” Jongin said. “It’s not great, but I’ve got to make ends meet in the off-season.” 

“The off-season?” Mark asked. Jongin sat down on the couch between him and Taeyong who pulled his feet really tightly into his body and eyed Jongin’s neck. 

“Oh, I play baseball for half the year. Minor league.” 

“Oh shit, no kidding,” Mark said, noticing the way Jongin’s thighs spread out on the couch and became solidly twice the width of Mark’s. He swallowed hard. 

“Nice to see you three awake,” Jongin said to the vampires to a smattering of thankful hissing mutters in return. He seemed unfazed. 

Lucas popped out of the kitchen wearing an apron and carrying a slotted spoon. “I’m trying to make shrimp diablo,” he said. “Mark and Jongin, do you want some? And has anyone seen Baekhyun?”

“Oh, heck yeah,” Mark said. “Thank you.”

“If you’re offering, I’d love some,” Jongin said. “I’ll go tell Baekhyun.” He turned to the vampires with an irresistible smirk. “None for you three?” he said lightly.

“Oh, we’re going out later,” Taemin said, still staring straight at the spot where Jongin’s collar parted over his chest. “But thank you, darling.” 

“Of course,” Jongin said, smiling like he cracked himself up. Mark narrowed his eyes. 

Knowing how useful he was in a kitchen, Mark came in to play sous-chef and ended up practically cooking the whole dish, from saving Lucas’s long fingers from under his knife to shelling the shrimp and measuring the spices. He let Lucas stir. 

“Thanks, man,” Lucas said. “This could have gone horribly.” He giggled happily like he was having fun imagining just how bad it could have gotten. Jongin came and leaned on the kitchen doorway and watched Lucas work in his sweats and sweatshirt. Mark realized he had to look a whole foot up in the air or something ridiculous to meet Lucas’s eyes and his skinny jeans and draped black cardigan probably made him look about half the size Lucas was. He went and stood on the other side of the kitchen. 

Jongin’s eyes stayed on him. Mark glanced up long enough to confirm that yes, Jongin was looking at him, and then felt his face turn as red as the diablo. He couldn’t imagine he was worth looking at with Lucas standing right there and the three vampires in the other room.

“Baekhyun says he’ll eat.”

“Score,” Lucas said. 

It was way too spicy. Mark was sure he hadn’t put in that much spice. He’d put in a reasonable flame level, but the stuff he put in his mouth could probably ignite gun powder. Lucas gobbled it down with some delighted grunts and a wicked smirk around the table and Mark began to suspect he’d been a little light-fingered with the spice bottles while Mark stared at the floor and blushed.

The rest of them hunched over their bowls and tried not to make too many faces, though Mark caught Baekhyun’s nose pinching and Jongin’s jaw working furiously. The façade broke when Mark got some right in the back of his throat and nearly coughed it up his nose. As he stumbled in blind pain towards the paper towels, he heard Lucas dissolve into little giggles behind him. 

“This is why I never eat your food,” Baekhyun said in lightly accented English since it seemed like that was the one shared language in the house. 

Mark scrubbed his face with a paper towel and whined. 

“Nasty trick to play on the new guy,” Jongin said. 

“And the rest of us,” Baekhyun said. 

Mark turned back around to see Jongin looking at him. Again. 

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m usually okay with spicy food. This is just…whoa.” 

“It’s a little over my threshold,” Baekhyun said. “Can you bring the paper towels over here? I need to scrub my tongue off.” 

When Mark went and sat back down, Jongin gave him a companionable rub on the back, which only brought Mark to a second cough attack. 

“It’s good,” Jongin said to Lucas. “Like…it’s too spicy, but the flavor is good.” 

“I love this spice level,” Lucas said. “I don’t know what any of you are talking about.”

“You okay?” Jongin said. Mark tried to nod without shaking apart. The big hand on his back kept rubbing warm circles right under his shoulder blade and he wanted to put his head on the table and close his eyes and never think again. 

They left Lucas to do the dishes as punishment for hurting them, though he seemed perfectly content to do them anyway. The vampires where just getting ready to go, Taemin and Ten milling around the front room with their jackets in their arms and makeup done up to heart-stopping as they waited for Taeyong to come down from the tower. “Did you go to school today?” Baekhyun asked.

“I did,” Mark said, “but I only had one class.”

“What was it?” Jongin asked. 

It had been a discussion on the ethics of curses. “Uh…math,” he said. 

“Just math?” 

Mark tried to dredge high school subjects back into his brain for a second. 

“Geometry?” 

Jongin gave him a side-eye that told Mark geometry was probably not a college level subject. “Right,” Jongin said. Baekhyun settled onto the couch and turned on the DVD player to watch a grainy opera that couldn’t have been filmed later than 1995. Jongin gave Mark a long-suffering look. 

“Want to go upstairs?” he said. 

Mark really needed to get started on his charms assignment due tomorrow, which involved making a literal charm for his charm bracelet. His design had already been approved, barely, and he needed to do some etching. He really didn’t have time to hang out with beautiful dudes. 

“Sure!” he said.

“Let me go get changed first,” Jongin said. As soon as the sound of his door shutting came from the upper floor, Mark grabbed his hat out from under the cushion and scurried upstairs to reshape it. He got his etching tools set out on his desk before Jongin knocked on the door. 

He had a PS4 in his room. They pulled up some couch co-op games and Mark gratefully relaxed into dude-hang-out mode, which he hadn’t enjoyed in a few years. Jongin draped across his own bed with his long legs in pajama pants and a ratty old t-shirt clinging to his pecks. Mark sat on the floor and leaned against a pillow at the base of the bed, trying to function through taking way too many glances in Jongin’s direction. 

“The only person in this house that’ll play games with me is Lucas,” Jongin whined. “And he beats me.” 

“Haha. Well you won’t have that problem with me, I promise,” Mark said, and then promptly lost five games in a row. Jongin looked very pleased with him. “I’m out of practice,” Mark whined. He’d begun to sweat in his cardigan but didn’t want to take it off and reveal his skinny arms. The ones sticking out from Jongin’s t-shirt looked thick and tan. “So baseball,” he said. 

“Uh-huh. It’s really fun.”

“Cool, cool. That’s, uh…” His character died again. “Oof. You’re good at a lot of things then?”

Jongin chuckled. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

Mark wasn’t sure that counted as flirting, but his heart was beating so fast his fingers had started to get a little tingly.

Partway through the evening, Jongin’s leg came to rest lightly against Mark’s upper back, almost definitely on accident. Jongin shifted and suddenly there was a little bit more weight against Mark through the blankets. Slowly the warmth seeped through the covers till Mark could feel it. Onscreen, his character jumped right off a cliff. 

“oh whoops,” he muttered. “Wasn’t watching the right, uhhhhh avatar.” 

Jongin chuckled deep in his chest. “So tell me a little bit about yourself, Mark. You’re a student?”

“Yeah I study in town. It’s like a little, um, like, private school.”

Jongin hummed. He started another game and began to casually pummel Mark’s character into the dirt. 

“Yeah? What’re you studying? Math?”

“I guess physics is more accurate? Maybe?”

“Maybe physics.” Mark glanced at Jongin and saw a little half smile on his face again, like he didn’t believe him but wanted to play along. “Okay. Got a girlfriend?” 

Mark swallowed hard. “I don’t, no.” 

“You don’t know?” 

“I don’t. Sorry. Don’t have a girlfriend. Do…do you?”

Jongin shook his head. “No, but there’s this dude on my baseball team that I like to mess around with sometimes.”

“D-oh. Uh, that’s cool.” It was sweltering hot inside Mark’s cardigan. He hoped his ears weren’t too red. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?” 

Mark shook his head slowly. “I’d like one though,” he said in what felt like a very strange tone. Jongin’s leg still rested against the top of Mark’s back. He wasn’t sure if it’d be weirder to lean into it more or lean away, but his back was getting pretty stiff. 

“Oh yeah?” Jongin said. “Seems like you and Lucas get along. You think that could work out?”

Mark’s heart sank a little. “Lucas. Um. Hadn’t thought about it.” His character onscreen got kicked off and cliff. He sighed and tapped his controller on the ground till he respawned.

“I think Lucas is straight,” Jongin said. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right. He seems kind of young too.”

“Isn’t he your age?” 

“My age? I’m twenty.”

“Yeah, so’s he.”

“Oh.” Mark sat there contemplating that for a minute. He’d been thinking Lucas was eighteen. Giant for eighteen, but he had that just-out-of-high-school feel. “How old is everyone else here then?” 

Jongin’s leg finally left Mark’s back and he realized he’d been leaning on it harder than he thought. “Baekhyun’s twenty-seven, I think. Then I’m twenty-five. The other three are somewhere between twenty-three and twenty-six, pretty sure. They’re weirdly cagey about it like they’re actually fifty-year-old women.”

“Ah,” Mark said weakly, ignoring the vampire implications and fixating on their five-year age gap. “You’ve been out of college for quite some time now.” 

“A whole four years,” Jongin sighed. “And I’m still renting with strangers.” 

“That’s not so bad though,” Mark said. 

Jongin’s leg pressed quickly again Mark again. “Nah, it’s not too bad.” 

Not long after, Mark excused himself to go strip his cardigan off his sweaty arms and lie on his face for a while before he could get his brain in gear to etch a charm. His back seemed to ache where Jongin had pressed against him. With a sigh, he put on his safety goggles and got to work. 

The forest after dark was a little busier than Mark expected. In the middle of pulling some old roots out of the cold mud at the edge of a bog, Lucas charged right out of a bush on all fours. 

“Oh shit, dude,” Lucas said as he helped Mark up out of the mud. He was missing a shirt and his pants were way too big for him. “Sorry about that. I didn’t know you were out tonight.”

“You either, man. What’s up?” 

“I got the zoomies,” Lucas said. “Gotta go fast.” 

“I see. Yeah get those sprints in.” He examined the mud smeared all the way down his side. The jeans had been a pricey purchase from a sustainable brand. They’d be a bitch to clean. The jacket was his usual groping around in the mud attire. It was the frigid damp soaking through onto his skin that really got to him. “Hm.” He said. 

“So sorry about that,” Lucas said. “Can I help or something to make it up to you?” 

“Um, don’t worry about it, man. I’m just gathering...actually, you know what? Do you think you could do some scavenging for me?”

“Scavenging for what?”

Mark’s school assignments, and witchcraft in general, involved gathered materials. Any materials he could find usually. The October forest was already approaching the season of barrenness. He had only a quick window to harvest his semester’s supplies. Lucas wouldn’t have the specialized knowledge to know what to look for. 

“Uh, like, bird feathers, snake skin, berries, mushrooms, antlers. Just bring me stuff and some of it’s bound to be useful.”

Lucas shot off into the moonlight, body warping strangely as he crouched till it looked like something more capable of running on all fours. He vanished between the trees.

Mark traipsed through the dark forest with his flashlight off and stuck in his back pocket. An owl hooted overhead. Wind rustled quietly through the orange trees. 

“Oh, it’s you,” he heard, and tripped over a root. His cold, muddy thigh smacked into the ground again. “Sorry,” said a familiar voice. Ten dropped soundlessly from a branch, pale skin picking up moonlight like chalk. Even his smooth black hair caught a little shine. “I was hoping you were another college student taking a midnight walk.”

Mark carefully checked his basket to make sure all his gatherings were still there. “Well, I am a college student taking a midnight walk,” he said. 

“I don’t bite housemates,” Ten said. “Gets awkward.” He settled down onto a tree root with his legs stuck out in front of him. He blinked with unsettling interest at Mark’s basket. What do you have there?”

“I’m pretty sure this is lily pad root,” Mark said, “and uh…cedar bark. And I found some poisonous toadstools in the backyard.” He sucked on his teeth a moment. “And that’s it. Right now. I do not have enough.” 

“I’d love to bite Jongin though,” Ten said. “People are seldom both handsome and tasty.” 

Mark felt a stab of something he decided was protectiveness and not jealousy. “Have you, uh, seen any deer skeletons around the woods?”

“Lucas would be the one to ask about that,” Ten said. “I never come very deep in and I don’t go far from the hiking trails. How are you liking everything so far?” 

Mark shrugged. “It’s really chill. I’d expected people to be more distant, you know? Since most of us are renting separately, but it’s super friendly.”

“You’d be fun to bite too.”

Mark gave Ten a long stare, long enough that Ten stopped smirking and started to look a little nervous.

“Just making sure you were kidding,” Mark muttered. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Ten said. “I’m wouldn’t bite a witch unless they asked for it. I’m not an idiot. You’re just also handsome and you smell tasty.”

“Oh gosh,” Mark said, rubbing the back of his neck with what was actually shyness and not fear. “Thank you. I kind of feel like a fish out of water with all the pretty people in the house, so thanks. Means a lot.”

“So you think I’m pretty too.”

“I, uh. Um. Y-yeah, I guess I said that.” 

Ten laughed his quiet, chilling laugh. The moonlight glinted off razor sharp fangs. He had a stain of something dark on the collar of his shirt. “You’re cute, little witch,” Ten said. 

“Little?” Mark muttered. “Pretty sure you’re shorter than me.”

“So cute,” Ten said, cutting him off. “I think we all agree, even the human.”

“You think?” Mark squeaked. 

Lucas burst into the clearing at the speed of a train. Mark yelped and nearly lost his footing yet again. Ten didn’t so much as blink. He’d probably heard Lucas’s pounding paw-steps long before he’d gotten anywhere close. 

“So I found—oh sorry dude. Didn’t mean to cause any heart failure today.” 

Mark wheezed and forced himself to uncoil and stand up straight. “So here’s, like, three owl pellets.” 

“Oh, wonderful,” Mark groaned as Lucas dropped three barfed-up mouse carcasses into his palm. “That’s super cool.” 

“I found some big old fungi.” 

Mark inspected the spongy disks. “I think these are pretty mundane actually,” he said. 

“How about these little black ones?” 

“Oh dude, no shit.” He took them out of Lucas’s hand and held them carefully. “Oh fuck. Dude. I think you can make some seriously baller gravies with these. And like, they taste bomb in an omelet.” 

“Not magical?” 

“Magic? Oh. No, I don’t think so. Hang onto them though.” 

Ten wrinkled his nose. 

“Deer antler?” 

“Jackpot! Just an antler? No skeletons?” 

Lucas shook his head. “Just the antler, but I’m out here a lot. You should tell me some other stuff you want and I’ll try to find it for you.”

They wandered back to the house as three, occasionally stopping so Mark could check out the growths on a tree or a sprout amongst the leaf litter. Ten left them just before they reached the edge of the forest, murmuring only, “I smell dinner,” as he vanished like smoke under the trees. Lucas scaled a tree to bring down a few unripe pinecones for Mark to inspect, and then they were back at the sagging wooden porch, the intricate trim casting soft patterns on the clapboard siding. 

“Good haul?” Lucas said, nodding at the basket. 

Mark’s shoulders sagged. “It’s okay, I guess. Better than it would have been without you, so thanks.” 

“I’ll find you some more stuff,” Lucas said. 

“Thanks man. I’m gonna need all the help I can get. God I’m bad at this.” He stared forlornly at his basket long enough that Lucas gave his shoulder a squeeze. 

“You’re gonna do fine, bro,” he said softly. Mark gave him a sincere and perfectly masculine unemotional nod, with barely a tremble in his lip and not even half a tear in his eye. Lucas disappeared into his room off the hallway, which looked a little like the inside of a tent with the amount of tapestries hanging off every surface. Mark took his basket of stuff and traipsed off to the second floor to begin the process of cleaning mud out of his pants. 

Mark was the only male witch in the entire school. The entire school of only nine people. It was technically a school aimed at women that took him on because he hadn’t been able to find anyone else. He sat on his well-flattened floor pouf with a crystal ball on his little table and tried desperately to make it do something. Even when he willed it to just look outside the window for him, it stayed resolutely blank. 

Across the room, Lydia the Gifted swayed back and forth with her lashes hooded, hands cradling the ball and mouth open in a permanent gasp like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Mark tried it, narrowing his eyes and slackening his jaw. The ball got blurry. He yawned. 

Two of the more advanced witches across the room gazed into the balls like they were listening to a friend’s boring drama. Yeri, as usual during Seeing, sat on her pouf across from Mark and looked furious with the world. 

“No, I didn’t see much,” she said afterwards. “I have good days and I have bad days. I got a few glimpses of my mom doing laundry and watching TV and some stranger catching the flu but that’s it. Nothing interesting.”

“I never see anything,” Mark moped. “Even when I feel like I’m in the perfect headspace, the most I’ve ever gotten was a flock of crows.” 

“That’s interesting!” Yeri insisted. “Crows are dope.” 

Mark was painfully aware that he was not a good witch. His professor had a rare expression of presence on her face as she held his charm up in front of her face, an intimidatingly motherly look in her eye. “It’s correctly etched,” she said. “But it doesn’t work.” 

“What did I forget?” he whined. 

“I don’t think you channeled the power correctly,” she said. “Partial credit. If you manage to make a working one by the end of the week I’ll improve your score.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “You really should find a male teacher,” she said. “I’m having a terribly hard time teaching you. These techniques just come easier to a feminine mind. You, Mark, have a very masculine brain.” 

“I’m not sure I’m happy about that.” 

She folded the charm into his palm and gazed up at him over her glasses. Kind smile lines deepened on either side of her eyes. “Find a male teacher, Mark.” 

“I’ve never met one.” 

Mark, as usual, walked right out onto the street without taking his pointy hat off. As usual, Yeri yanked it off his head before he got to the white picket gate at the front of the garden.

“Lydia the Gifted is lending me a book,” she whispered, and wiggled her eyebrows before stomping after the shawled and floaty figure of Lydia as she wandered down the sidewalk. Mark shoved the hat in his bag and turned towards town. 

Halfway down Market Street, Mark ran straight into Jongin. He stepped back fast, clutching his offending shoulder. “Oh, dude, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, man. I’m not paying attention.” 

Jongin stared at him in surprise, hands protectively over his chest where Mark had rammed him. “Were those your jeans in the bathtub this morning?” he asked. 

“Yeah. Um. Sorry. I kind of fell in the mud last night. I’ll move them when I get home.” 

“You know we’ve got a laundry machine, right?” 

“What? We do? Jeez, I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, it’s in the basement. You doing alright, Mark?”

“I, um…” Mark looked down at his watch. One p.m. 

“Yeah I had a whole three hours of class today. I’m kinda…burnt out I guess. What’s been up with you?”

“Want to get coffee and talk about it?”

“Wanna—oh sure. Yeah. Sure.”

There wasn’t much to say. Mark told a blatant lie about a literature course. Jongin made a few comments on a sale he’d just closed and then ordered a mimosa. His hair swept off his forehead in a gelled business boy arc. His undercut didn’t look as great as it could have that way. Mark gave it a couple half appreciative, half disapproving looks. 

“Just coffee?” Jongin asked.

“I ordered a bagel too.”

“I mean what’s in that drink?” 

“Oh, um, it’s uh…it’s a pumpkin spice latte with extra sugar.”

Jongin snorted. 

“What?” 

“I’ve just never seen anyone actually order a…you know what, can I taste it?” 

Mark pushed it across the table for Jongin to try and watched the way his lips wrapped around the lip of his cup and his eyebrows squeezed in with caution and he took a sip. He grimaced a little. 

“Too sweet?” Mark said. 

“Yeah, it is. Sorry.” 

“That’s fine,” Mark said, taking it back. “Not everyone likes that stuff. I’m not wild about, um, mimosas.” 

Jongin pushed his glass across the table for Mark to try. 

“Oh, hoho, uh. Thanks.” He took a sip and was completely surprised by what a mimosa actually was. “That’s kind of good. Wow. Thanks. Like, I think I thought it was gonna be stronger than that. Doesn’t it have, like, vodka?” 

Jongin laughed, big smile pulling at his cheeks. “That’s a screwdriver. Mimosas are champagne and orange juice.” 

“Oh!” Mark blinked at it a minute, unaware he’d been drinking anything so fancy. “Can I try another sip?” 

“I can just order you one.”

Mark glanced around for the waitress. “Bro, I’m twenty.” 

“Oh right.” Jongin gave him an apologetic smile. “I forgot. I mean I could order you one anyway and I don’t think anyone would say anything.” 

Mark shook his head, so Jongin handed the glass across the table for another sip. 

At that moment, Yeri blazed past the glass front of the café, earbuds in her ears. Mark made the mistake of jumping a little, which made her glance down. She jerked to a stop and yanked one of her earbuds out, staring at him. 

And then she turned and looked at Jongin. 

It was too late for the panicked expression and shooing motions. Her eyes bugged. She turned and gave Mark a very obvious, very visible scandalized expression, then a lascivious smirk, and then she was off down the sidewalk again without looking back. Mark put his head right down on the table. 

“Who was that?” Jongin laughed. 

“Yeri. She’s my best friend. Worst friend. She’s my worst friend.”

Jongin kicked his shin gently under the table so Mark would look up and catch his kind smile. “She seems fun.” 

“Yeah she is.” He dragged himself upright. “Sorry about her. I don’t know what she thought but she’s always trying to embarrass me.” 

“That’s a good best friend,” Jongin said. 

“Worst friend.”

“Yeah okay.”

They walked the rest of the way home together, Jongin quick on his long legs and Mark quicker on his slightly shorter legs. He felt a little weird to be in his school clothes, all his carefully tailored black knits and flowy sweaters. If he didn’t already feel so out of place around the rest of the witches he’d be dressed much more like a normal twenty-year-old college student. There was no telling what Jongin thought of his neo-goth ensemble. 

“Want to play some more games?” Jongin asked as they approached the big house. It stood grey and imposing over the end of the street like the best stereotype of the haunted house at the end of the block. 

“Yeah! Totally. Well…later this evening? I had some stuff to do in the woods.” 

“In the woods?” 

“Oh, uh, I mean I think I dropped something in there.”

Jongin chewed on his bottom lip, staring towards the forest suspiciously. “Do you want any help?” he asked. 

“No! No, it’s fine. I got it.” 

Jongin nodded like he understood completely. “See you after dinner then.” 

“Yeah, uh…yeah see you. Can’t wait.”

Jongin disappeared into his room and Mark skipped off into the forest with his basket again, hoping Jongin wasn’t looking out his window. He couldn’t get away with wandering around at night and not being able to see things anymore. Fall would pass and winter would come and if he didn’t have the supplies to last until spring, he’d be screwed. 

And not the kind of screwed he’d like to be. 

Cold fingers on Mark’s cheek woke him in the dead of night. He struggled to blink for a moment and saw bright red eyes above him. Startled, he sat up. A foul smell like rotting meat filled the room. “Tae-Taemin, wuh?”

“Darling, you locked Lucas outside.”

“I—” Mark looked around. They were in the living room, Mark laid out across on the couch. Taemin leaned over him with a sweet smile, and was that flush on his cheeks? “I did…oh no.” Lucas stood behind Taemin with an armful of debris from the forest and a heart-shattering pout. Around midnight, Lucas had promised to do another collection round and sent Mark shivering and yawning back inside to wait for him. 

“You-you didn’t have a key?” Mark yelped. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. What time is it?” 

“A bit after three in the morning,” Taemin said. He unwound a red scarf from around his neck, canines showing over his lip and eyes glittering like rubies. Taeyong and Ten stood and chatted by the stairs, taking their pointy shoes and designer coats off. “We found Lucas on the porch waiting for us.”

Mark stood up too fast, swayed, and sat back down on the couch. “Lucas, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize you needed me to let you in! You should have banged on the window or something. What on earth is that smell?”

Lucas, coming easily to terms with the idea that being left outside was not malicious and therefore perfectly fine, already had his wide smile sneaking back onto his face. “Man, you just knocked out in here,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, dude. It was a nice night. I was only waiting about two hours.”

“Two hours!” Mark buried his head in his hands. 

“Didn’t want to wake up Jongin anyway,” Lucas said. “Not with all these things.” With that, he dropped his pile of debris on the table. The source of the smell became obvious. 

“Holy fuck, is that an owl carcass?” 

“I think it’s pretty fresh,” Lucas said. 

Mark swept the whole pile into his arms, not minding the stench or whatever he touched that was wet, and sprinted upstairs. Lucas came behind him. 

The wet thing had been another bunch of mushrooms, good ones this time. Mark quickly shoved them in his mini freezer and got to work preserving the owl. “Oh shit, it’s a screech owl,” he hissed under his breath. He pulled long strips of cedar out of his supply chest and began scraping spells into them. 

“It’s kind of rotten,” Lucas said. “Sorry about that.”

“No no, this is perfect,” Mark said. He inspected the bird. It was covered in ants and the feathers were pretty smashed but the cool weather must have kept it in decent shape for a few days. “I don’t think I’ve ever found a better carcass like this. I can use this in all sorts of stuff. Oh my god Yeri’s gonna be so jealous. Fuck it. Lydia the Gifted is gonna be jealous.”

“Who the hell is Lydia the Gifted?” Lucas asked. 

Before Mark could answer, the door across the hall made a distinct, creaky opening sound. “Fuck,” Mark said and bolted across the room. He got a split-second view of Jongin shirtless and squinting, rubbing his hand over his eyes as he stumbled out of his room before Mark slammed the door shut with alarming force. 

He held very still. “Mark?” he heard from the hallway. 

Lucas dissolved into nervous, whispery giggles behind him. Mark leaned on the door. 

“Jongin, good evening,” came Taemin’s voice. 

Mark dropped to his knees to stare through the enormous keyhole on the antique door. He could see a pair of pajama pants and a pair of faux-leather skinny jeans, and if he crouched down more, the hem of Taemin’s mesh tank top and just a little bit of a happy trail on Jongin’s very smooth tan stomach. A thin, high-pitched wheeze left his throat. 

“Hey, Taemin. It’s like, three in the morning. What’s going on?”

“Me and the boys just got back. That’s all.”

Some silence. 

“We’ve been out at the clubs.”

“On a Tuesday.”

“Every day is party day.”

“This town doesn’t have much of a scene for that.” 

Taemin shifted awkwardly on his heels. Mark gnawed on his fingernails. 

“What’s going on out there?” Lucas whispered.

“Shh.” 

“Uh,” Jongin said. “Are you thirsty?” 

“What?” Taemin squeaked. “No, not at all, why do you ask?”

Some more silence. “I’m kind of thirsty,” Jongin finally said. “Lemme get to the bathroom. What the hell is that smell?” 

Mark whipped around and shot dagger eyes at the dead owl on the table. 

“What smell?” Taemin said. 

Jongin and Taemin stood there in silence for another minute before both began mumbling politely and Jongin moved past Taemin towards the bathroom taking his happy trail with him. Mark inched the door open.

“He totally knows something’s up,” he whispered. 

“No, no he doesn’t,” Taemin whispered back. “I’m very convincing.” His black eyes hadn’t quite stopped looking red. Mark was pretty sure the dim hallway light hadn’t completely hidden the poorly wiped-off brown smears on his neck. 

Jongin slid out of the bathroom with his glass of water and Mark resisted the urge to slam the door again. “Oh hey, Jongin, w-what’s up?” 

“Sleepin’,” Jongin said. “What’s up with you?” 

“I, um,” he glanced back into his room. “Fell asleep on the couch. Taemin just woke me up.”

Taemin smiled placidly. Ten and Taeyong finally made it up the stairs and froze on the landing to look around at the gathering. “Anyone know what that smell is?” Jongin said. 

All the vampires started muttering and shaking their heads. 

“Oh, Lucas rolled in something,” Mark said. 

“Hey!” Lucas said, and suddenly towered in the doorway over Mark’s head. “No, I didn’t!”

“Sorry, not rolled. Stepped. We’re, um, cleaning it up right now.” 

Jongin raised his eyebrows at Lucas’s sudden appearance. “Can’t resist the woods after dark, huh?” Jongin said. 

“Uh….” 

At that moment, another door at the end of the hall swung open and Baekhyun stumbled out in a matching pajama set, clutching a pillow to his chest, hair a pink bird’s nest. “Wus-goin-on,” he grumbled. “Whys-ever-one-awake?” 

“Good question,” Jongin said, eyes raking over the three very peppy, very dressed-up vampires on their way to the tower part of the house, and the still dressed, mid-project Lucas and Mark. Baekhyun did a thorough examination of the crowd and then sniffed the air. A look of bafflement and disgust broke over his face. “Everyone’s getting back from their nighttime activities, I guess,” Jongin said. 

As all seven housemates stood in the second-floor hallway, the clock downstairs quietly chimed the half-hour mark. 

“We’re really sorry we woke you,” Mark said. “We’re just cleaning up a mess. Everyone can go back to bed now.”

“I’ll see you all in the morning,” Jongin said and stumbled back into his room with one last searching look over Mark’s body. 

As soon as the door closed, Mark whipped around to Lucas. “Do I have anything on my face?”

Lucas took him by the shoulders and inspected. “Little bit of dirt,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of stuff on your arms and shirt though.”

Mark looked down at himself and realized the mushrooms had left wet brown marks all over his arms and bits of bark and leaves hung onto his shirt. He sighed. 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Baekhyun said as he walked up. “The man was half asleep.” Behind him, the vampires walked down the hallway towards the front of the house where the door to the tower sat opposite Baekhyun’s master suite. “What’s really going on?”

“It’s so cool,” Mark said. “Lucas found me an owl.” 

Baekhyun and Lucas watched with surprising interest as Mark scraped out the rest of his spells and packaged the owl in bark. He tucked herbs and stones into the twine. The smell faded from the air and Mark put the preserved owl away in his chest of supplies without fear of contaminating anything else. 

“Whoa,” Lucas murmured, staring down into the chest. He played with the way the compartments lifted up into shelves and folded down into the body of the chest. Baekhyun kept his distance, eyes bugging and arms clutched protectively around himself. Mark allowed himself to feel a little smug and powerful. 

“Ya’ll aren’t really scared of this stuff, are you?” he asked, just to watch them shudder and flinch and then and fail to play it off. 

“I don’t use any of it on people,” he said. “Don’t worry.” Witches were the ones that kept the secrets of each creatures’ weaknesses and bent the amorphous, punishing power of magic to their own will. Usually. Mark was pretty sure magic didn’t care a wink what he tried to do with it. No reason to explain that to the monsters he lived with. 

“Do you know any potions for werewolves?” Lucas asked. 

“Like what kind?” 

“Stuff to make full moons better,” he said. He leaned over the chest hopefully. “They’re usually pretty painful and I feel really bad about scaring people and tearing up the woods. I think there are potions that make it better.” 

Mark scratched the back of Lucas’s head without thinking about it. “Yeah, I can do that.” 

Lucas leaned into his hand and smiled. 

Most days started with stretching. After waking and brushing his teeth, Mark spent a fair amount of time shirtless with cleansing oil on his arms and hands, reading through books on magic and stretching to keep himself in good physical shape for romping around in the woods. Sometimes he did some push-ups but he didn’t enjoy that very much. The tan and muscled presence across the hall had him doing squats and lunges too these days. After he began to perspire reasonably, he carefully crossed the hall and showered. 

Jongin left his shower stuff in the claw-foot bathtub. Mark was still working up the courage to do the same. He’d been brave enough to turn each of Jongin’s bottles around to read the brand and a little of the labels, but touching them made him weirdly nervous so he left them alone. People’s personal belongings could be invested with a little power over them and Jongin was too careless and trusting, leaving them around like that. 

Not that anyone but Mark could take advantage of that anyway. And he was pretty sure no one else used their bathroom. He hoped Jongin didn’t mind having to share too much. 

Downstairs, Lucas was two bites into a slice of avocado toast. 

“Oh, damn dude. That looks good.”

“I hate it,” Lucas whined. 

“What? You hate it?”

“I don’t think I like avocados,” Lucas said. His head thunked onto the table. “Do you want it?” 

So Mark had avocado toast for breakfast and nearly skipped into town on the wings of the morning. 

Yeri stepped on it, of course. “Who. Is. He.” 

“One of my housemates! I swear! He lives across the hall from me and we just ran into each other and decided to eat lunch.”

“He is gorgeous!” Yeri shouted. “If you don’t score a date with him within a week, I might just pounce.” 

“Yeri, he’s like twenty-five. And you don’t like men.”

Yeri snickered and punched Mark’s shoulder. “Going for the older ones then, are you? Dirty. If you live with him have you seen him shirtless?” 

“Yes,” Mark groaned. “Oh my god. I don’t think it’s…I mean like, it’s not a good idea. Like. He’s so hot. He’s hella out of my league.”

“You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, bro.” 

“He’s a normie! And the whole house is trying to keep shit on the down low. He’d probably be freaked out if he knew.”

“So don’t tell him.” 

“I’ve got a whole dead owl in my room,” Mark said. “You think I’d be able to keep things secret for that long?” 

Yeri held up both her hands. “Red light. Stop there. A whole dead owl?” 

“Uh, yeah?” 

Yeri waved her hands frantically around. “And it’s the first time I’m hearing about it?”

“I only got it two nights ago!”

The witch community college was another Victorian house, this one much more cottagey and smaller than Baekhyun’s Boardinghouse for Male Monsters. An exuberant and prolific garden shielded it on four sides from the gaze of the neighbors, beanpoles and rose trellises strapped to the fences and sunflowers wilting in the autumn chill. Much of the vines and bushes were going brown and crackly but the sun was still warm enough that they’d found a nice place to sit at the tiny iron tables by the fishpond. 

Lydia the Gifted seemed to have an ear turned their way as she sat on the brick wall by the pond. Neither Mark nor Yeri had decided to tell her about the corner of her gray shawl trailing in the water. 

“Your baby wolf just found it,” Yeri reiterated. “In the woods after midnight.”

“Yeah, he did. And he’s not a baby wolf. He’s our age.”

“We’re baby witches though.”

Mark didn’t like that description. He sipped his honey lemon ginger drink and scowled. “Student witches,” he said.

“Don’t want the big man across the hall thinking you’re a baby, huh?”

Mark turned on his best glower, which he knew made him look like a ten-year-old throwing a tantrum. He tried anyway. Yeri shook her head and went back to her worksheet. “You gotta do better than that, babe.”

“Should I really ask him on a date?”

“No. That’s a terrible idea. You’re a witch. You live with monsters. You’re going to traumatize that man for life.” 

Mark nodded in defeat. 

“Excuse me,” Lydia the Gifted said. “Did you say you found a whole owl cadaver?” 

“Aren’t cadaver’s only humans?” Yeri said. Lydia blinked at her like she’d been speaking another language.

“A carcass? Well, my housemate found it.”

“And you’ve preserved it?” 

“Uh-huh?” 

Lydia clenched her jaw like she was about to jump off a cliff. “I’ll help tutor you if you let me use just a few parts,” she said. If Yeri hadn’t been there, Mark would have jumped for joy. His own pride and Yeri’s scoff kept him firmly in his seat. 

“How about money?” Yeri said. “That’s how people normally do things.”

Lydia ignored her. “I know you’re having trouble.”

When Mark didn’t immediately turn her down, Yeri rolled her eyes and started shoving her books into her bag. “For god’s sake,” she hissed. “You two work it out. I’m going to Starbucks.” 

Even invoking the name had Lydia muttering and blessing over her own head. Yeri stomped off and Lydia slid into her seat. “What do you say?” 

“Uh, yeah, thank you, I really need it. Um. How much? Of the owl?” 

Mark came home feeling more drained than he had since he first made his Pact. He dragged his cast iron pot that doubled as both a cauldron and a Dutch oven and started up a brew on the stove without thinking. He threw in ginseng, tea, and a couple caterpillars, and then sat on a stool by the counter and put his head on his arms, ignoring the acrid smell that always came with using the old pot. 

“Where. On earth. Did you get that,” said a voice at the kitchen door, and Mark looked up and saw Jongin in his suit, hair broken down out of its gelled style. He stared right at the old rusty pot on the stove and the brew bubbling inside. Mark realized his hat was still on his head. He left it on. Yanking it off would be more awkward.

“Um. My friend’s mom?” 

“So it’s an antique?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so.”

Jongin came over and stared at it. “Is it heavy?” 

“Oh, hell yeah. It’s awful.” 

“The design is so…multifunctional.”

“You sell anything like it?” 

Jongin squinted at the little iron mask shape on the lid handle. “No, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen something that shape. It almost looks like one of those tea kettles with the broad bases.” 

It had been a witch invention in keeping with the new popularity of stoves. Cauldrons over an open fire just weren’t as practical anymore. “It’s okay,” Mark said. “I’d rather have a pot and a Dutch oven and kettle, you know? The sloped sides make it hard to get into sometimes.”

“What are you making?” 

“Uhhhh tea?” 

Jongin gave him a serious side-eye. “Nice hat.” 

Mark swallowed. “Thanks. It’s, um, seasonal.” 

Jongin pulled out a chair and sat down, staring at Mark with what could have been either suspicion or serious bedroom eyes. Mark squeezed his thighs together. “Been thinking about a Halloween costume?” Jongin asked. 

Mark hadn’t celebrated Halloween in years. Magic schools tended to give the day off so witches could prepare for rituals and gatherings on All Hallows day on November first, the easiest day of the year to contact spirits. “Uh…maybe I’ll go as…a werewolf.” 

“I’ve been thinking of going as a vampire bite victim,” Jongin said. “Easy enough.”

“…Is it now?” 

Jongin shrugged. “I just got to put red paint on my neck. Sounds perfect.” 

“Right.”

Mark realized he’d have to strain the potion soon and it might be hard to hide the caterpillars. He shuffled and glanced at the clock. 

“I’m going to go get changed,” Jongin said. “Feel free to come play games when you’re done brewing that.” 

Mark jumped a little at the phrase and had to remind himself that ‘brewing’ tea was the common phraseology. All the same, he sat there a little longer than he should have, mulling over the conversation. 

(“I’m not sure he doesn’t know,” Mark told Baekhyun a few minutes later after Baekhyun finished whining about dead caterpillars in the compost.

“He totally doesn’t know,” Baekhyun said. “He’d be out of here so fast if he knew. That is if Taemin didn’t catch him first. You really think a human would be able to live this calmly with three vampires? No. Dude.” 

That made Mark hopeful, but it wasn’t the same hope as Baekhyun’s.)

It was getting hard for Mark to ignore the way Jongin got close when they played. They sat shoulder to shoulder since the cushions they had to lean against were only so long. Mark had decided to let real loose with sweat pants and an old t-shirt instead of his usual long sleeves and could distinctly feel the line where his sleeve ended and skin-on-skin contact between their arms began. 

Jongin didn’t seem so big this close. Mark’s shoulder was only a little lower than his, his legs only a little shorter. But Jongin smelled so delightfully like cologne and Mark kept worrying that he somehow smelled of owl. 

“So you like Halloween?” Mark asked. 

Jongin flashed his deadly smile. “Why do you ask?” 

Mark yanked his gaze away. “Um. Well you asked first, so…”

Jongin chuckled. “I mean, yeah. It’s fun. Those were always the best parties in college and scary stuff is just fun. I dressed up as Edward Cullen one year.”

“That’s cool. Bet you pulled that off.”

“Thank you. What was your coolest costume?”

Mark already had an answer ready for that question. “Uh, there was one year when my mom sewed me a Tigger costume. Like from Winnie the Pooh? Yeah. That was…a good year.” 

“Sounds adorable.” 

Mark could hear the smile in Jongin’s voice. He bit his lip and stared resolutely at the screen, refusing to be embarrassed about the best costume his mom ever made him. 

“You could do a dope witch costume with that hat,” Jongin said. 

A strange frantic laugh left Mark’s mouth. “I feel like I do that every day. Witch costume. Just faking it haha.” It was a little too on the nose. Jongin snorted what sounded like a sympathy laugh and Mark didn’t even care. If he didn’t know, the comment wouldn’t bother him, and if he did, no use faking it. 

But if he did know, Mark thought, and his fingers slowly froze on the controller. If Jongin knew about all this mess and was still sitting shoulder to shoulder against Mark with their legs almost touching, then surely Jongin would be okay with this. If he was still saying things like ‘adorable’ and smiling at him like that, then maybe a date would be okay, and maybe…

Jongin won the game and dropped the controller on his lap. The ending screens scrolled through slowly in a blitz of color and sound effects. Jongin heaved a quiet, quiet sigh. 

“You okay, bro?” 

“It’s nothing. I’m just feeling a little down.”

“Did something happen, or…”

“It’s kind of dumb,” Jongin said. He leaned away from Mark for the first time in a while and pulled himself across the floor till he could sit against his dresser and face Mark directly. “I think I told you about the guy on my baseball team that I hooked up with sometimes?” 

“Oh, uh, yeah, I remember something about that.”

Jongin looked a little uncomfortable for the first time ever. “I saw on Facebook that he’s dating, which is, like, fine, but I just think I’m gonna miss it, you know?”

Mark did not know. Mark had never had a hook up buddy in his life. “Oh yeah. That blows. I mean, it’s not the worst if you don’t have feelings about it, but like…yeah. Still not…so maybe you’ll just find someone else? And then you’ll be over it?”

Jongin shrugged. “I think that’s all it’ll take, yeah.”

“Uh huh?” 

“Not like I was seeing him now that the season’s over anyway.”

“Right.”

The silence continued to stretch out. Jongin looked up from his lap and met Mark’s eyes directly, face the most intense blue-steel smolder he’d ever seen on a fellow human. Mark’s whole chest seized. 

As if summoned by a pager that rang when Mark was neck deep in a charged conversation, Lucas threw the door open. “Wussup guys, still playing?” It took Mark only a glance at Lucas’s gorgeous smile to remember why he felt like the ugly stepchild of the house. 

“We’re between games right now, actually,” Jongin said, sliding smoothly from seductive to totally casual. “Want to jump in?”

“Have my controller,” Mark said. “I’ll just watch for a bit. I’m okay with just one person beating my ass but two is a lot.” 

“Don’t like getting double-teamed?” Lucas said, taking the controller in his meaty paws and daddy-long-legging his way across the room to span the entire bed. “You’re a one-man kind of ass-whooping guy?”

“Oh, Lucas,” Mark whimpered. 

Jongin only laughed at him, tone dark and beautiful with his eyes squished fondly together. 

“Whoa, are you an ass guy? If you know what I mean?”

“Yes, Lucas.” 

Lucas nodded. “I like butts too.”

“No, Lucas.”

Lucas looked back and forth between Mark with his head between his knees and Jongin snickering behind his hand and then searched in his head for an explanation. “Boob guy?”

“Also no.” 

“Wait, you can’t be not a boob guy or an ass guy. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I—you know what, don’t think about it too hard, okay?”

But a look of amazement was already sneaking across Lucas’s face. “Ohhhh,” he whispered. “You like dick.” 

Mark nearly stood up and walked out, but Jongin’s sultry look had left his pants awkwardly tight and he was still dealing with damage control. 

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” Lucas was saying, scooting towards Mark like he was about to hear juicy gossip. “So like, have you had boyfriends?”

“I had one in high school,” he groaned. “You, Jongin? Have you had boyfriends?”

“Not in a while,” Jongin said, and Lucas gasped, rearing up out of bed. 

“Wow,” he said. “Wow, I had no idea. I’m totally cool with that, by the way. No problems at all.”

“Good to hear,” Mark said.

“So no boyfriends now?” Lucas said. 

“It’s just my entire school is women and I haven’t really been meeting anyone else for years,” Mark said. “And I can’t do Grindr. I get freaked out.” 

“I’m on Grindr,” Jongin said. 

“What is Grindr?” Lucas said. 

After a long explanation in which Lucas said “whoa” a lot and Jongin couldn’t stop laughing, they finally settled down to play games. 

“Pretty sure the Triple T’s are at least partly gay too,” Lucas said. 

“Yeah, I think they’re banging each other,” Jongin said, which was evidently not something Lucas had considered by the look of utter shock and excitement on his face. 

“Yooooo,” he said. “There is so much going on in this house that I didn’t know about.” 

“I can relate,” Jongin muttered. 

Before Mark could think about that too hard, Lucas threw himself down on his stomach with his head between both of them, chin on his palms, sleepover style. “Do you guys, like, ever bring anyone home?” 

Both shook their heads. “I’ve been here less than a week,” Mark reminded him. 

“Who do you think is the hottest in the house?” Lucas said. “Mark, who do you think is the hottest?” 

Mark panicked, cheeks flaming in color as the undisputed hottest in the house sat feet away from his with a slick grin on his face. “Myself,” Mark said. 

“Haha, Mark, I know you don’t think that.”

He hung his head. He just barely stopped himself from hiding his face in his shirt. “You, Lucas. I think it’s you,” he said, trying to play it off. 

“Really?” Lucas said. “I think it’s Taemin.” 

Jongin’s full-on laugh sounded a little like he was choking on something. 

“What about you, Jongin? What do you think?” 

For a moment, Jongin looked up and met Mark’s eyes and Mark’s heart took off at the rate of a spooked horse. 

“You’re right. It’s probably Taemin,” Jongin said. Mark’s heart crumpled like a soda can. “But I think every single person who lives here is seriously hot. Like super model gorgeous.” 

Mark just scoffed a little, but as quietly as his could. “Taemin? I was thinking it might be Taeyong actually. Like, objectively. He’s really pretty. But you’re all super hot, so…” 

“You included,” Jongin said, tapping him with a toe. Mark took a bit too long to look up and say thank you, so he only caught the tail end of Lucas’s agreeable nod, but Jongin’s searching gaze set off a shower of sparks in his chest. “You’re cuter than anyone here too.”

“I take offense to that,” Lucas said, but he was already reaching for Jongin’s controller to try to start the game so the conversation ended there. 

Later in his room, Mark curled up under his covers and kicked the mattress in frustration and want. He thought he might need to drag Lucas into every interaction he had with Jongin if he ever wanted to get anywhere. 

Mark’s professor pulled him aside in the middle of morning yoga to tell him his second attempt at the charm was a success. “Don’t forget you can make practice projects and then a final if they don’t work the first time.”

“How do you tell if it works or not?” 

She blinked at him a moment. “Well I just kind of…feel it,” she said. 

“Oh.” Mark stared down at the little charm in his hand, just a silver tab with an ever-so-slightly off-center design that he’d etched himself. He fished around in his bag for the first attempt and held them both up, comparing the two. 

The practice charm’s design was dead center. Both had been done with a stencil so the lines were identical. He squinted at them and tried to decide if he could feel a difference. “Um,” he said. 

His professor took the practice one out of his hand. “Tell me Mark. What is that charm supposed to do?” 

“Uhh ward off bad interactions.”

“Does the thing in your hand feel like it’ll do that?” 

“Huh. Yeah, actually, it does.” 

She handed him the practice charm. “Does that?” 

The thing was a flat silver tab with a simple design on it. “No, it doesn’t.” 

“Perfect,” she said, and left Mark there to stare in utter confusion at his working charm until the yoga instructor came out into the hallway to call him back. 

Mark came home late after dinner with Yeri, charm attached to his bracelet, excited to show Lucas, and opened the door to the sound of dripping water and several voices yelling. 

He followed the yelling to the second floor, then down the hallway, then, cautiously, through the open door of the tower. A lovely space opened up around him, windows circling at least a quarter of the walls with thick velvet curtains pushed back to let the streetlight in through the tree branches out front. Table lamps glowing on every surface. Two beds poked out into the room from opposite walls. Two dressers sat against the flat inside walls that connected to the rest of the house. A capacious window seat took up an entire third of the wall and a spiral staircase dropped through the exact center of the room. 

“I just wanted to take a bath!” someone shrieked. Mark’s gaze lowered and he saw an enormous amount of water pooling out of the bathroom and onto the carpet. 

A pipe behind the claw-foot tub had burst and was spewing tepid water out onto the floor. Taeyong and Ten cowered against the stylish sinks at one end of the bathroom as Jongin crouched on the other, frantically trying to work something loose with a wrench. 

“Holy fuck,” Mark said. 

Baekhyun, Taemin, and Lucas all pounded into the room behind him and pushed him into the bathroom. Water flowed over his shoes. “oh,” he whined.

“It’s just rusted away, I think,” Jongin said. He held a hand out to block the flow from blasting him right in the face as he talked. His abs glistened in the light. He’d swept his hair back. “These are really old pipes. Lucas, did you find a replacement?” 

Lucas held several even rustier sections of pipe out in front of his with a desperate look on his face. “This is all I found in the shed,” he said. 

“Guys,” Mark said. “You know you can turn the water off, right? And the power?” 

Baekhyun gaped at him for a moment and then raced back out of the room. Mark followed him. “I think you need to call the plumber,” he said. 

Baekhyun turned and gripped Mark’s shoulders with both hands. “I’m not letting another one into the house,” he hissed. 

“Dude, chill,” Mark squeaked. “You’re relying on the one you have to fix your shit already.” 

Baekhyun grumbled and continued racing down the stairs. 

A couple frantic minutes later, all the water and the relevant power supply had been shut off and a flashlight brought back up to the bathroom. Baekhyun had left to go to the store for the right size pipes. Taemin had begun to mobilize clean-up. 

“And I’d had such a good day, too,” Mark said as Ten dumped what felt like every spare towel in the house into his hands. 

A long evening of drying things and being careful around outlets ensued. Jongin worked shirtless. Mark worked distractedly. The three vampires hissed and whined to each other and eyed Jongin’s bare body with interest. 

Mark caught him on his way down to the basement with another set of soaked towels. His bulging muscles still shone gently with damp. “You, um,” he shook his own head at what he was about to suggest. “You might want to put a shirt on,” he said. 

Jongin blinked at him. “Why?” he asked. 

Mark definitely wasn’t staring at the thick ridge where Jongin’s shoulder and neck connected, and the swell of his bicep. “The va—uhh.” Taeyong walked past them, gaze flickering down Jongin’s back with a gleam of red.

Jongin looked like he was considering things for a moment, but nodded and dropped the towels into Mark’s arms. He headed up the stairs. 

With the gentle hum of fans and space heaters filling the house and making it even draftier yet hotter than normal, all the housemates settled on the couches of the living room. Baekhyun put two boxes of wine in the center of the table. Lucas brought the glasses. 

“Vegan wine is in the kitchen for you three,” Baekhyun said. The vampires tittered and all ran for the kitchen.

Jongin stopped mid-pour. “Vegan…wine?” 

“Uh, yeah. Don’t you know these three are vegan? That’s why they never eat with us.” 

Jongin turned and gave Mark a look that clearly said either _I know they’re vampires_ or _wine is vegan to begin with_. Baekhyun obliviously upended his glass down his throat and leaned down to reload. Mark laughed nervously. 

“New house policy,” Baekhyun said when the vampires had rejoined them with brimming glasses of red fluid. “No disasters without Jongin or Mark or both in the house.” 

“How about new policy: no baths,” Jongin said. 

“Nope,” Baekhyun said. “Can’t do that one.” 

“Absolutely not,” Mark said. 

“Can’t have that,” Lucas agreed. The vampires all quietly said they could do without baths. 

“I prefer to use the bath at our club anyway,” Taemin murmured. “It can fit three people and has jetsss.” 

“What the hell kind of club do you go to?” Mark asked. “Actually, you know what, never mind.” 

“A sex club,” Taemin said, and then gave Mark a very obvious secretive wink. On the other side of the table, Lucas cringed and took another sip of wine. Jongin openly shook his head in disbelief. 

“I’m really scared,” Baekhyun said, and then interrupted himself with a massive burp. “About the water damage.” 

“I think we managed to mop it up fast enough that it’ll be fine,” Jongin said. “There might be a little floor warping but there wasn’t standing water longer than about forty-five minutes. I’m more worried about the mold in the clothes and towels we can’t dry that fast.” 

“And our electricity bill,” Lucas said. 

“Look, I said I was sorry—”

“Not your fault, Ten,” Baekhyun said. “It’s okay. It’s probably actually my fault for not having those pipes checked out a few years ago.”

“I got a good grade in school today,” Mark said in a very quiet voice. 

For a moment, no one seemed to process what he’d said, and then everyone congratulated him at once. Taemin patted his hair and Lucas cheered out loud, but what stuck out to Mark most was Jongin’s warm hand reaching out and giving his thigh a pat and a rub. Baekhyun made a toast and gulped another half a wine glass. 

“Truth or dare,” he said. 

“Baekhyun, that is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Ten said. 

“Um. Never Have I Ever.” 

“Still a horrible idea.”

“…charades?” 

And so the group sat around and guessed that Ten was a tiger and Mark was a single lady and Taeyong was a pole dancer. Taemin caused a stir by being Napolean. Jongin made a very convincing Michael Jackson. Then for the next ten minutes they tried to figure out what Lucas’s steering wheel motions and nearly Shakespearean drama poses meant. 

“Fast and Furious,” Jongin finally guessed. 

“YES! Dear god you heathens! It’s like none of you have ever seen them before!” 

No one had. 

Mark was beginning to feel a little drunk. He sank down lower and lower into his seat till his head was at a perfect height to just tip, just a little, just over to the side a bit, a few inches, and rest against Jongin’s shoulder. The warm hand returned to his thigh. 

It went pretty well under the radar. On the other side of their very couch, Taeyong lay against Taemin’s chest, Taemin’s hands rubbing slowly at his back. Ten sat a few feet away eyeing the two with a devilish glint. Occasionally all three vampires would look intently their way, but they seemed to be eyeing a spot somewhere below Jongin’s eyes. 

“Oh my god, pay attention,” Baekhyun said as he stumbled to the front. “I’ve got to be a beauty pageant girl.”

“You just told us what you were going to do, darling,” Taemin said. 

“Fuck!” He sat down on the edge of the coffee table to think. “Hold on, hold on, hold on. It’s still my turn. Um.” 

The hand on Mark’s thigh wrapped around the inside of his leg down by his knee. He shivered a little, leg tensing. His second glass of wine sat barely touched on the table but he didn’t want to sit up and grab it and disturb what he had going. Lucas looked directly across the circle at the hand on Mark’s thigh and didn’t even seem to notice. “Do you mind this?” Jongin murmured. 

“Huh? Oh. No. No, keep doing…it. That.”

“Wussit called. The thinking man,” Lucas said way too loudly.

“I’m not doing it yet,” Baekhyun snapped. 

“Kinda want to play Never Have I Ever,” Mark said, not loud enough. His new charm warding against bad interactions emboldened him to suggest some risk. “Have you guys ever played the version with, um, Bitch If You Haven’t? It’s exactly like Never Have I Ever Except you can, um, you can say, like, Bitch If You Haven’t and then you say…something you’ve done and people who haven’t have to put a finger down you know what, never mind.” He’d noticed Taemin’s hand sneaking under Taeyong’s hips. “Kinda don’t want to know what some people in here have done.” 

“I’m still thinking of mine,” Baekhyun whined. “Don’t change the game. And pageant girl was so good too.” 

“What were you going to say?” Jongin said quietly, just for him. “If you wanted to play the game, what did you think of?”

“Oh, um, probably just…bitch if you haven’t had a cock in your butt or something, I don’t know.” 

The hand on his leg squeezed. “That sounds targeted,” Jongin said. 

“I’m sure Lucas isn’t the only one,” Mark said. “Baekhyun would probably go down too. And we’d get to confirm some suspicions about the va-uh the Triple T’s.” 

The hand slid a little further up Mark’s leg and he tilted his head back to look at Jongin, hoping his eyes were as hooded and sexy as Jongin could make his but fearing he looked dumb and half asleep. Jongin stared right back. 

“I’ve got it,” Baekhyun said, standing up. “Who am I?” He opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and let out the most inhumanly gorgeous sound Mark had ever heard in his life, honeyed and liquid through his ears, yanking his breath right out of his lungs. Each note hung in the air after they left his chest, the sound an unearthly howl of beauty. Siren song filled the room and rattled the windows.

“An organ!” Taemin howled over the noise, a tone as thin and frail as reed crackling in the breeze. 

The unholy chorus cut off in a moment. 

“You’re a fucking organ!” Taemin said. “Now shut the fuck up!” 

There was a breath of silence and then everyone turned to Jongin. 

Jongin’s hand squeezed Mark’s like a vice, eyes blank and wide and staring into space. Baekhyun slapped a hand over his mouth. Mark sat up quick, leaning away. 

Just like that, Jongin blinked and looked around. Everyone stared back at him. He swallowed hard. “Whoa, just got real loopy there for a minute,” he said. The whole room let out a collective breath of relief. 

Everyone but Mark, who narrowed his eyes. Jongin gave him a little look of shock that only made him more suspicious. 

“I was the three tenors, by the way,” Baekhyun grumbled. “Not an organ.” 

He grabbed his wine and sat down. 

“I thought I heard some Pavarotti in there,” Taeyong murmured. Taemin took a wine glass of blood and lifted it gently to Taeyong’s lips. 

“I might go to bed,” Mark said. “End this evening on a, um…a high note.” 

Baekhyun looked a little sheepish. 

Jongin followed him up. Mark had reached the tipping point of drunk quite quickly, literally tipping into things and holding himself upright, which led to a drama at the top of the staircase where he ended up on his belly with his legs still down the stairs. “Smells like water in this house right now,” he mumbled into the rug. 

“C’mon,” Jongin said, grabbing him under the arms and lifting. Mark found himself on his feet before his knees knew to engage. 

“Whoa,” he said, and it came out squashed by the hands on his ribs. Jongin leaned him up against the end of the stair banister for support. He clung to it. 

“You’re really so cute,” Jongin said. 

Mark straightened up and blinked at him. “Who, me?” 

“Yeah, you.” He patted Mark’s cheek. Mark also reached up and patted his own cheek to figure out why Jongin would have done that. It felt decently soft. Jongin continued grinning at him. 

“Thanks, man,” Mark said. “You’re…you’re not cute. Sorry. I can’t say you’re cute. You’re like, too big.” 

Jongin giggled like that, too, was cute. He ran a hand through Mark’s hair. Even drunk, Mark was pretty damn sure that was flirting. “Bitch if you haven’t had a cock in your butt, huh?” he said. 

“Oh my god, I’m drunk,” Mark said. 

“No, I’m glad you said that. I’d been wondering if you had.”

“Oh,” Mark said. He shook his head and tried to force his brain sober. “Yeah, I have. Bitch if you haven’t?” 

“I have,” Jongin said. “And for the record, Baekhyun has too. We’ve had this conversation.” 

Mark felt oddly jealous. 

“You’re pouting.” 

“M’not.” 

Jongin thumbed at Mark’s bottom lip, and oh, there it was. If Mark hadn’t been pouting before he was pouting now. “I can’t get a read on what you want,” Jongin murmured. 

If Mark had known what he wanted right there, he would have told him, but instead he stayed leaning against the banister, pouting his lower lip out and flushing. He reached out and took a handful of Jongin’s t-shirt, a handful right over his waist, right at the dip of his torso that Mark had been eyeing all evening before the shirt went on. 

And then he chickened out, feeling almost like he didn’t have the right to a face so beautiful, that Jongin should get with Taemin or Baekhyun or anyone twice as sexy as Mark and half as sexy as Jongin himself. 

“I should go to bed,” he said. Jongin gave way and let him stumble towards his room. 

Jongin washed up in the bathroom with him, brushing his teeth in the mirror, scrubbing his face after Mark did, filling up a glass of water for him, and then another, and then filling it to the brim when he only got through a few sips. “It’s going by your bed,” Jongin said. 

“Don’t you need one?” Mark asked. 

“Babe, I’m completely sober.” 

“Babe,” Mark said, turning the word over in his mouth. And then, “oh sorry, did I say that out loud?” 

“I liked it when you said it.” 

Mark’s stomach took a nervous dive. “Whoa. Woof. Yeah, I really think I need to be sober to figure that out.” 

Jongin followed him into his room to put the water down. Mark was all the way in the bed struggling to get his pillow in the right position before realizing there were still open spell books and tarot cards scattered all over his desk, and that his ingredients chest was wide open, and that at least three witch hats sat on top of the dresser. 

“Oh!” he said, sitting up, “That’s, um. That’s because…”

Jongin pushed him back down against the pillow. “Mark,” he said. “Don’t even bother.” He fluffed Mark’s hair and pulled his sheets up a little higher and left the room. Mark wasn’t awake long enough to hear the door close across the hall. 

(“I’m pretty damn sure he knows,” Mark said the next morning as he stood over Lucas’s bed. “Like he was giving some pretty solid hints that he knows.”

“Relax, he can’t,” Lucas grumbled into his pillow, “we’re so fine. He don’t know nothin’.” 

“I’d expect the inhuman monsters not to pick up on it,” Mark grumbled, “but you, Lucas? You are somehow the most human guy in this entire house.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’d totally know,” Lucas slurred. “He’s chill.” 

Mark stomped back out into the kitchen to make his hangover cure. And he didn’t even balk at handing some to Jongin as soon as he came in the kitchen, moth-wings or no.)


	2. Boo Boys

The one boyfriend Mark had once possessed had been named Donghyuck, and he was a little devil. 

A literal devil, mind you, with horns and occasionally hooves, a devil who liked to sit on Mark’s legs and tease his dick until he had literal tears running down his face, which actually wasn’t all that enjoyable. He much preferred when Donghyuck put that patience and torturous effort into sticking fingers up his ass to play long enough for Mark to get lightheaded. 

Mark wasn’t sure why he was thinking about that first thing on a Saturday morning as he passed around his hangover cure, but it might have had something to do with the way Jongin’s fingers wrapped through his mug handle. Mark hadn’t gotten off in nearly two weeks, too busy moving and figuring out how to survive in a monster house with school perpetually tugging at the back of his head. 

He took another sip of his hangover cure. Across the table, Baekhyun was only picking his head up off his arm to take sips of his hangover cure. His pink hair lay out in a sweaty mess over his ancient sweater. 

“This stuff is magic,” Jongin said. 

“It isn’t,” Baekhyun insisted. Jongin raised an eyebrow.

For the first time, Mark caught Lucas doing a double take. 

“Hey Jongin,” Mark said. “Do you mind if I monopolize the bathroom for, like, two hours?” 

“No, I don’t mind. Just let me brush my teeth again first. I can use Lucas’s bathroom if you need one.”

“Do not,” Lucas said, “not right now. Mark didn’t get me this hangover cure fast enough.” 

“Baekhyun’s?” Jongin tried. 

“We do have a bathroom by the kitchen that doesn’t belong to anyone. You can use that.”

“I have never been in there, and after yesterday, I’m not sure I trust any appliance in this house that I haven’t used yet.” 

“The only bathroom left is the one in the tower and you can’t disturb the vampires during the day.”

As Baekhyun lifted his mug to his lips once more and then put his head back down on his arms, Mark and Lucas both stared right at Jongin, frozen where they stood. Jongin just nodded and took another sip of his tea, also seemingly oblivious to Baekhyun’s slip-up. 

“Were Triple T okay after last night?” Jongin asked. “They had an awful lot of, uh, vegan wine.”

“Oh yeah,” Baekhyun said, head coming up off the table in a hurry. “They were a mess off that vegan wine. They, um, went to bed shortly after you did.”

“So that’s what all those noises were?” Jongin said. “Yikes. They’ll be sore as well as hungover today.”

Lucas squeaked out a scandalized cackle and ran off with his hands over his ears.

“Cute puppy,” Baekhyun mumbled under his breath. 

The kitchen remained still and quiet except for occasional gentle slurping noises and the hum of the fridge. The headache and fatigue slowly left Mark’s body like they were being burned out of him, shriveling up and leaving all the bad chemicals in ashes throughout his blood. 

“Why do you need the bathroom for two hours?” Jongin said. “Should I even ask?”

“I just wanted a bath,” he said. He also intended to stew himself in a detox herb soup but Jongin didn’t need those details. 

An hour later, Mark steeped neck deep in the most ridiculously oversized claw-foot tub he’d ever set foot in, water milky with dissolved salts and steeping plants, flowers floating over the surface. A few large, smooth stones clattered against the tub when he moved around too much. He’d run the water almost too hot, knowing it would cool off too fast, and had made of himself more of a boy soup than a bath as he lay there perfectly still, letting the water do its work. 

Someone knocked on the door. He pushed his shoulders out of the water a little. “Uhh, yeah?”

“Mark, I’m so sorry.” It was Jongin. “I think I left my phone in there and I really need it.”

Mark’s gaze zeroed in on the sleek leather wallet case with phone sitting on the bathroom counter. “Uh, yeah it’s here. Um. So you need to come get it?” 

“If that’s alright. Sorry.” 

Mark glanced at the milky water to make sure it was absolutely opaque. The only thing that could be seen was the tops of his thin shoulders and the tips of his bony knees. He brought one arm awkwardly out of the water to prop it on the freezing side of the bath, hoping it made him look cooler. “Yeah, if the door’s unlocked, you can come right in.” 

Jongin evidently expected the curtain to be drawn around the bath. He looked right over at Mark when he opened the door, startled a little, and then yanked his gaze away. 

“It’s all cool. I’m hidden,” Mark said. 

Jongin scuttled over to his phone. “Wow,” he said. “Having a regular spa day.”

“Yeah, it’s super nice.” Mark couldn’t help but sink deeper into the bath again. 

“Want me to light some candles? Start some music?” 

“You know what?” Mark said. “I wouldn’t mind.” 

Jongin had his phone, but he hesitated there by the sink for a minute. Then he knelt, opened a cabinet, and drew out an entire box of candles. “I do this sometimes too,” he said. “They’re lavender scented. You want me to light some up?” 

“Fuck yes,” Mark hissed. “Candles. Why didn’t I think of candles?” So Mark simmered in the bath, surprisingly calm for Jongin being right there, three feet away from Mark’s naked body as he set up candles on what looked like already clearly planned spots. He had a lighter in the bathroom drawer. “You do this a lot?” Mark asked, eyeing a candle that was at least halfway burned down.

“This is how I wind down after games,” Jongin said. “I don’t go crazy with the water though.” He nodded at the milky, planty surface of Mark’s bath. 

“This is the good stuff though,” Mark said, and dragged a handful of leaves up from the depths of the bath. He watched the way the milky water dripped down his arm. “Tell me you at least do bath salts.”

“Salts,” Jongin said. “And sometimes I go as far as a bath bomb, but that’s about as crazy as I get.” 

“Crazy,” Mark repeated. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of lavender. 

“What’s that stuff supposed to do for you?” Jongin asked.

“Wha-stuff?” 

“Like, the stuff in the water.”

“Detox, um, regeneration of…electrolytes? No that’s wrong. Or not? Just speeds up recovery I guess. Feels great.”

“Does it actually feel that different from regular water?”

Mark slid his eyes open, feeling a little like an alligator sitting in the murk on the surface of a pond, waiting for prey. “You wanna stick your hand in and see?” 

Jongin stuck his hand in way farther than Mark thought his would, thick wrist disappearing into the water, and now it was Mark that was at a disadvantage with the milky water, unable to see where that hand was going. He held very still, conscious of his body laying out against the back of the tub, of where his legs drifted apart, of where his dick floated in the current.

And then Jongin drew his hand out. “Whoa,” he said. “That is different.”

Mark cleared his throat. “I can set you up with this next time you’re hella hungover. Or just whenever.” 

“Yeah, thanks,” Jongin said. “I’d like that.” He dropped the lighter back in the drawer and headed for the door.

“Thanks for the candles!” Mark said. 

“No problem!”

And then he was gone and Mark sat in a way too hot bath with his heart pounding and his skin prickling and his dick a little harder than he wanted it to be. Fun interaction achieved with no Lucas or charm to help. He grinned and sunk deep under the water. Despite everything, he’d felt kind of sexy hidden in his fancy bath.

Lydia the Gifted met Mark in the middle of a glade in the woods, her blond hair caught under a woven hood like a character out of a fairy tale, skirts spread out all around her as she knelt on the forest floor. Her distant gaze had Mark hesitating to walk close, as usual. 

“Mark, hello,” she said as soon as he got within fifteen feet. She opened her eyes. “You’re faraway today,” she said. “Many things have been weighing on your mind. Stress from school, a big change…” she squinted. “That’s a lot of sexual frustration. Maybe try getting off a little more regularly.”

“Wow, how did you even know that?”

“It’s all in your aura,” she said. 

“I can’t read auras,” he grumbled. 

“Men seldom can.” 

Mark flopped down on the dying grass in front of her. “Yeah, that’s my big problem. Professor says I need a male teacher if I’m going to really get it.” 

At that, Lydia the Gifted’s smiled like she thought that was funny. “No no,” she said. “Masculine witches don’t function that differently than feminine witches. That’s just a failure of teaching. The difference is easy to overcome.”

“Oh,” Mark said. “But that means I’m just bad.”

Lydia waved her hands through the air between them like she was trying to clear away bad vibes. Weirdly, Mark felt better. “I’ve heard it compared to our center of gravity,” she said. “Women tend to have their center of gravity in their hips. Men usually have it in their chests. It doesn’t change that much about how we move, but it does affect balance. Your magical balance isn’t drawn from the same, ‘place,’ as feminine witches draw theirs, but it’s not different in essence. It can also help to focus on your, um, pact mark, although that’s not actually your center of magical balance.”

“My pact mark?” 

Lydia looked a little shifty, gray eyes darting off towards the woods. “You know, the mark that a devil put on you.”

“I don’t know about a mark,” Mark said. 

“Everyone has one,” she said. “It’s pretty private though. I guess if you didn’t grow up around witches you might not have realized.”

Mark sat back on the grass and tried to figure out what center his magic came from anyway. He tried to remember if he’d ever seen a mark on his back when he looked in the mirror. “When I made my pact,” he said slowly, rubbing over the back of his neck, “my devil focused on my back, but when we do magic in class, it feels like I’m pulling it from my stomach.”

“Exactly,” Lydia said. “Pull it from your shoulders.” She moved her skirts out of the way and little strips of pine bark sat in her lap. “We’re going to be drawing warding runes, the same ones we learned in class. Draw your magic from your pact, not your gut.”

They scribbled in silence, scratching away with their styluses. Sometimes Lydia would take a deep breath and sit with her eyes closed, face turned towards the breeze, and Mark would wait awkwardly until she seemed prepared to handle the world again. He couldn’t imagine Yeri seeing them, sitting in an autumn meadow drawing spells on bark like a perfect stereotype. 

Mark had to wait a few minutes for her to come back down to earth to present his completed bark spells. “Oh!” she said, and took them from him. She frowned back and forth between them and then put them back in his hands. “You tell me,” she said. “Do they work?”

“Something about that question tells me they don’t.”

“Feel it, Mark,” she said with exaggerated patience. 

“I don’t feel anything.”

She nodded. “It’s because they don’t work.”

“Knew it.” 

She kicked her legs out from under her, awkward and impatient for the first time since he entered the glade, which was refreshing after all the drifty, floaty shit she got up to back at school. The struggles were startlingly human. “Just, um, tell me where your pact mark is.” 

“Probably on my back, I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’d see it regularly if it was anywhere else.” 

“Do you mind if I…ugh.” Lydia rubbed her face. Her cheeks began to turn pink. Mark watched in fascination as her usual fluffy perfection crumbled a little bit. “Do you mind if I check so I can tell you where it is or will you would you rather just go home and use a mirror and we can meet up again tomorrow or something?”

“Uh, no, you can check. Like, I see Yeri’s mark all the time. That’s the brown circle on her chest, right? So it’s not weird just to see it.” 

Lydia nodded. “Mine’s on my upper arm,” she said. “I just don’t often wear short sleeves.” She stood and walked behind him to gingerly hold open his shirt collar and look down the back. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “Do you think it’s…in your pants?” 

Mark didn’t know how to tell her that he checked out his own ass in the mirror often enough to be sure it wasn’t there. “I don’t think so,” he said.

She came back around front and flopped back into the grass looking very confused. “You have to have a mark,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t do magic at all. Maybe it’s just really small.” She gazed at him with her piercing gray eyes until he began to get a little uncomfy. “Tell me about your pact,” she said. 

“Well I made it with a devil.”

“Obviously.”

“Who was my boyfriend.”

“Oh, that’s different,” she said. 

“Really? Who’d you make a pact with?”

“A family friend,” she said. “My parents both have a pact with the same devil so he got their children too. I was seven.”

“Oh shit,” Mark said. “I was seventeen.”

Her jaw dropped a little. “You started really late,” she said. 

“I thought that was normal.” 

She shook her head. “So you had a boyfriend. Who was a devil. Before you were a witch.”

“His name was Donghyuck and he was a menace. We went to high school together.” 

“A devil in high school,” Lydia muttered. “I can’t imagine.”

“I’ve been worried that my magic is drying up since I ditched him.”

“It shouldn’t have any effect,” Lydia said. “Even if he was an asshole, he’d take a lot of personal damage if he tried to disturb your pact. You’d be able to feel it too. You’d be able to find him.” 

Mark, distracted, had started going through his charm bracelet to find the ones that didn’t work. He’d found three so far that just didn’t feel like anything and was beginning to feel small and discouraged. “He wasn’t that much of an asshole,” he muttered, “just inappropriately playful and kind of confused by emotions.”

“Tell me about the pact itself,” she said. “Usually people start with summoning, but I guess you didn’t have to.” 

“It was a normal Saturday night,” Mark said. “We’d been planning it for about a month and he sat on the bed and ate Doritos while I drew the ritual on the floor.”

“Romantic,” Lydia intoned. 

“And then I got naked.”

“What? Why?” 

“Because he said I had to.”

“That was a prank.” 

“I know that now.” He took off his dumb witch hat, feeling like a very special kind of failure, and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “And then he kind of gave me a sexy shoulder massage and chewed on my ear and did some devilish chanting. Um.” He patted his cheek to make sure it wasn’t actually on fire. “And then we had sex. On the sigil. Which I think was unnecessary but felt like the right thing to do in the moment, and it was my favorite kind of—oh fuck, the mark is in my ass, isn’t it.”

Lydia let out the most undignified noise he’d ever heard out of any human, no poise or even expression in the horse-like snort. “I’m not checking for that one,” she said. 

Mark picked up his hat so he had something to hide his face in. Lydia let out a short, definitely a little delighted snicker, like she couldn’t resist enjoying his embarrassment. 

“Okay,” she said. “Now we know. I want you to write these spells again, but imagine magic coming from your shoulders. It flows out of your spine and across your shoulders and down your arms to your hands. Your magic is in your back. And if you want to think about the pact mark in your ass, you can do that too.” 

“You know,” Mark said. “I think you and Yeri would get along better than either of you think.” 

She tossed the bark in his lap. “I think the reason Yeri and I don’t get along is precisely because of how similar we are in nature, even if we are dissimilar in personal presentation.” 

Mark drew the spells again, this time with the awareness of a feeling of energy across the tops of his shoulders and down the backs of his arms, almost like he was flexing a muscle more than pulling from a gut feeling. When he finished, he didn’t even need to hand them to Lydia to know they worked. 

“How do you know about this when our professor doesn’t?” he asked. 

Lydia stretched her long legs out on the grass, brown leggings extending the line of her boots up under her skirt. She stared shrewdly at Mark for a moment before speaking. “When I was younger, it was my father who was in charge of teaching me magic. I was absolutely horrible at it until I was nearly fourteen. For seven whole years, it seemed like I was the only magical dud in the family. My mom, in desperation, took me aside and tried to give me extra lessons, but she had been taught by feminine witches and had no idea how men learned, so she thought she was re-explaining what my father had already taught me when she taught me feminine magic. 

“I got it immediately. As soon as she told me to pull from my gut and not my shoulders, it was like pulling a stopper out of a drain. That was the final proof I needed that I really was a woman and I needed to start living that instead of pretending to be who I looked like. It was the best way I could explain to my parents that I was their daughter and not their son. They understood immediately and I began my transition later that year. But they accidentally indoctrinated me into both systems and I still remember my dad’s lessons. It’s made me a little more powerful even if I can’t use all of it. Makes me think we shouldn’t separate our schools quite so hard.” 

“Oh,” Mark said. A lump pushed at the inside of his throat. “Thank you so much,” Mark said, “For teaching me and for trusting me with that.” 

“It’s my pleasure,” she said graciously. “You’re a good witch. Even if you do hang out with Yeri. Now when do I get the owl parts I was promised?” 

The house just before dusk was a house preparing for vampires. Baekhyun retreated to his room for a little while to rest before he dealt with them. Jongin usually had only just gotten back from work and was in his room getting out of his work clothes and relaxing. Lucas hadn’t’ yet started his dinner experiments. 

On the front porch, Mark paused and looked down the hill towards the sunset still touching the base of the valley. A couple church spires still caught the orange shine. He felt deeply, for the first time since moving, that he was in the right place, that nothing but good could come from living there. 

No one met him as he moved through the dingy house. Spiderwebs collected in corners and candles had been affixed to unlikely surfaces and then forgotten. The red velvet curtains were still drawn tightly across most of the windows. He sighed in satisfaction, feeling a little more like he fit in there. As he hung up his hat and stowed his bark warding spells, he felt a knock on the door. 

He opened in a crack and found Jongin standing there looking like the most dastardly of Mark’s wet dreams with his hands in the pockets of a pair of gray sweat pants. “o-oh, Jongin,” he breathed. 

“Hey,” Jongin said, voice rattling as he spoke. “I’m coming down with a cold.”

Mark dragged his eyes away from the way Jongin’s shoulders filled out his hoody. “Oh man, that really sucks. From getting all wet in the plumbing disaster yesterday?” 

Jongin’s cheeks looked a little blotchy red. He sniffled. “Yeah, that must have been it.” He glanced down the hallway towards the tower, and then leaned in in a way that made Mark remember him bending over the bath that morning. “Look, do you have any cold cures? Because I have a meeting Monday and I really want to be well.”

“I mean I—I don’t know man, I’m, um, not a doctor, so…” 

“Mark,” Jongin hissed, leaning in, “you’re a witch. Make me a potion.” 

A smile snuck across Mark’s face. “Yeah, okay, come in here.” 

He had a million things to say as he pawed through his ingredients chest, and all of them stuck in his throat. _I got better at magic today._ _I think I made a new friend and she’s cooler than I thought._ _dude, I have a devilish mark in my ass._

“Whoa, is that a dead owl?” Jongin said, probably tipped off by the tag that read ‘owl carcass’ in big sharpie letters.

“Yeah, Lucas found it for me the other night,” Mark said. He tried not to let Jongin see the jar of dead insects he was dipping into. People tended to get weird about bugs. “That’s what that awful smell was.” 

“Lucas is a…werewolf?” Jongin guessed with as much doubtful inflection as he could force into his sentence. 

“Yeah, yeah! Good job. How’d you find out?” 

Jongin sat gingerly on Mark’s bed, staring around the room. “Well, he kind of goes ballistic on the full moon. And he has way too many chew toys to be normal.” 

“And you know about the Triple T’s, don’t you?” 

“The vampires? Oh yeah. I figured those three out first.” 

Mark threw a bunch of ingredients in his cauldron thing and led them both downstairs. “How long do you think we have till they wake up?” he asked. 

“These days they’re usually up by about 6pm, so we have forty-five minutes.”

“That should be enough time.” 

Cold cures usually came out both gross and useless when Mark made them, but he had the cool confidence of Lydia’s lesson in him. He started measuring out honey. “Can you put, like, a pint of water in the pot please?” he said. “And set it on high?” 

“Yeah, got it.” 

Jongin leaned around Mark to pour water into the pot, holding the whole iron thing under the faucet by the handle like it wouldn’t tip Mark right over if he tried to hold it with one hand. He watched, mouth dry. After a minute, even Jongin’s thick arm seemed to give in to the struggle, and he stepped up to brace his elbow on the sink. His whole body lined up against Mark’s side, just inches away, close enough that their clothes brushed. 

“You seem like you had a good day,” Jongin murmured.

Mark shivered even in the warmth of the kitchen, his brain short circuiting dangerously for a person with magical honey in his hands. “Huh? Uh. What, uh, what makes you think so?”

“You’re relaxed,” Jongin said. “You seem more comfortable than normal.” 

His eyes were so close, liquid brown and so warm. Mark began attempting to pull the cutting board out of the cabinet without looking away from Jongin’s eyes. “Had a…a pretty cool day today. What about you?” 

“I had a great day,” Lucas said, popping out of the hallway. Mark dropped his cutting board with an enormous clatter into the sink. Jongin slid away to put the water on the stove. “I went for a long walk,” Lucas continued, “met a cool dog, had a giant sandwich for lunch.” 

He sat down at the table and Jongin flopped onto the bench across from him. “What about you guys?” 

“Caught a cold,” Jongin said. “Mark is making me a cure.” 

“I found out I have a devil pact sigil up my ass somewhere,” Mark said. “Fuck my ex.” 

Lucas barked his screechy, scandalized laugh. Jongin made an abrupt, confused noise that sounded a little squashed. The sound of Mark’s knife slicing herbs tapped out a quick rhythm. 

“Wait, you’re not serious, are you?” Jongin said. 

“Oh, I’m serious,” Mark said. “I’ve got a pact mark. Up my butt. Because my ex had a shit sense of humor.” 

“Your ex was a literal devil?” Lucas squawked. 

Mark finally turned to get a better read on the reaction. Lucas had both giant hands over his mouth, eyes bugging out of his skull. Jongin’s mouth hung open. He looked weirdly excited. “Don’t make it sound like a big deal,” Mark whined. “He was a dumbass. I went to high school with him. He had shit grades in every class but choir. He liked chewing on things too much.”

“Oh, so like me,” Lucas said. 

“Exactly, Lucas. Except not quite.”

“So we’re talking about this in front of Jongin now?” Lucas said. 

“Just you guys,” Jongin said quickly. “I’d rather everyone else think I still don’t know. And I already knew about devils.”

“Really?” Lucas chirped. “Why?” 

“You knew about—”

“I met one,” Jongin said, looking oddly shifty. “You meet devils as a salesman I guess.” 

“Think about it, Lucas,” Mark said. “If Baekhyun knows he can let his guard down around Jongin, he might start messing with him.” 

“And I’m still trying to figure out how the vampires actually, like, feed,” Jongin said. “If they don’t think they have to hide from me, they might try something, and even though I’m curious, I don’t actually want to end up dead.”

“You’re curious?” Lucas said. “Like you actually want them to bite you?”

Jongin pouted and picked at the table. “I mean, no, but like I really want to know what parts of vampire fiction are true.” 

“They’re usually actually monsters,” Lucas said. “But these guys wouldn’t kill you. They never kill anyone. I don’t think they drink from unwilling victims very often either, though I do think they sometimes, like, compel people.” 

“Hm,” Jongin said, chewing on his bottom lip.

Mark was trying to slide the crushed spiders into the brew without Jongin seeing, shimmying the cutting board up his chest and standing nearly sideway to keep his back to Jongin as all the exoskeleton and leg bits fell into the bubbling water.

“Baekhyun’s taking a nap right now, right? Jongin, have you figured out what he is?” 

“Well, until last night I had no idea, but I knew he was in on it. But…banshee?” 

Lucas leaned back, shaking his head. “Naw, man, banshees sound like something out of a horror movie, not a trio of opera singers. Banshees sound like nails on a chalkboard or something.”

“But banshees do exist though,” Jongin said, leaning forward and looking thrilled. 

Lucas shuddered. “Yuh-huh. I met one once. She screamed and I was completely paralyzed for five whole hours, and she was way way less human than Baekhyun is. He’s almost normal.”

“Was she hot?” 

“What?”

“Hot. Was she sexy?”

“No, dude, she was like a corpse.” 

Jongin changed the subject. “Baekhyun’s actually from Korea, so is he a Korean monster?”

“That’s a good question,” Lucas said, looking at Mark.

“What, you expect me to know because I’m Korean?” 

“Uh, yeah?” Lucas said. 

“Then shouldn’t Jongin know too?” 

“I don’t know shit,” Jongin muttered.

Mark shrugged. “I’m pretty sure s—what he is aren’t Korean. I don’t know how that works but I don’t know about any Korean creature that, like, sings.”

“Siren?” Jongin guessed. 

“Yeah, he’s a siren,” Lucas said as Mark said, “I’m not sure we should tell you.”

“Oh. Oops.”

“I’m going to keep on pretending I don’t know anyway,” Jongin said. “But that’s awesome. I want to see more cool siren powers.”

“Pretty sure sirens are more terrifying than vampires are,” Lucas said. He looked a little moody. “Werewolves aren’t usually terrifying at all.” 

As Mark ladled cold cure into an oversized beer mug, careful to avoid stray spider legs, he heard the telltale tread of feet in the tower overhead. “Sounds like the beauty queens are up,” He said. “Gotta throw out all this potion stuff before they get down here.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t waste your supplies, did I? I know you were saving those.”

“You did?”

“I uh, heard you and Lucas talking about gathering in the hallway a few nights ago.”

“Ah. Well, this is all stuff I can buy. We’ve got like, witch retail.” 

“That’s so cool. Do you get sales on rat eyes or some shit?” 

“Uh, yeah, I guess we do. There was a sale on, um, uh…Broom and Bat Ltd last week for snake tongue.”

“Weird.”

“It is, yeah.” 

“How’d you find all this stuff?” Jongin said. “Like, you weren’t born a witch, right? You had to figure this out at some point.”

“Uh yeah, it was only three years ago, actually,” he said. “So my boyfriend in high school…” he turned around and saw Jongin, tall, tan, smokey-eyed, twenty-five-year-old professional baseball player Jongin with his glossy deep brown hair and his plush lips staring back at him intently. “Whoa, we’re talking a lot about my ex today,” he said weakly. “Um…so he was a devil, and people become witches by making pacts with devils, so…it happened.”

“And he put the pact inside your ass,” Jongin said. 

“Oh my god can we not talk about that?” Lucas squealed. 

Mark kind of seized up, suddenly hyper aware that he was hiding an asshole and a sphincter under his clothes and Donghyuck had definitely put an unholy mark in there. “Yeah we can not talk about it,” he said. 

“Not that I think it’s weird!” Lucas sad, suddenly frantic. “That you had a boyfriend and he stuck stuff up your butt.” 

Mark keeled right over into the floor and prepared to crawl under the sink. 

“Sorry!” Lucas yelled. “I’m sorry.”

Footsteps in loud leather dress shoes came banging down the stairs. Mark dragged himself upright in time to see Jongin with oven mitts dumping the cauldron’s contents into the trash with a horrified expression on his face. He slid the thing back down on the stove and then sat like nothing had happened. 

“Good evening, my lovelies,” Taemin said as he slid into the kitchen with his hair still as artful as it had been when he went to bed the night before, and Mark had to wonder if he actually slept standing upright in a coffin. “Nice to see you all gathered for…dinner, is it?” 

“Oh right!” Lucas said. “I was gonna try making flatbreads for all of us.” 

“Dinner,” Taemin mused. “Yes, I could use some…dinner.” His eyes slid right over the back of Jongin’s neck. “With some wine.”

Jongin casually flipped his hood up and drew the drawstrings of his hoody so tight around is face that his hair and chin disappeared. Taemin shook himself and snapped his gaze away. He gave Mark a gorgeous smile. “You look rather red, darling.” 

“It’s uh, I just got kinda, it’s nothing. You walked in on, um, never mind.” 

“The flatbreads won’t be vegan though,” Lucas said, and gave Taemin and exaggerated grimace. “Sorry.” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Taemin said. “We’re off the dance at the clubs soon. We’ve got a shift that doesn’t end till 4a.m. so we’ll be back very late.” He wrapped his arms around Jongin’s neck in a poor imitation of a hug and breathed in deeply through his nose, then strolled back out the door.

Taeyong appeared looking much sleepier, hair hanging in his eyes and pale arms clutched around himself. “Sire, m’not ready yet.”

“Just how late did you and Ten stay up this morning?” Taemin chided. They headed back up the stairs. 

“He’s really trying to adjust to normal human interaction,” Lucas said in a stage whisper. “He’s trying really really hard. He’s actually made huge progress.” 

“Now _that_ impresses me,” Jongin said. 

“How are you so, like chill with all this?” Mark said. “Pretty sure if I’d found out about vampires before I was a witch I would have had a breakdown.”

Jongin shrugged. “I figured out they were vampires after I figured out they were dorks so they never really scared me that much. And like, monsters are…interesting. I’m more interested than scared.”

Before Mark could say, ‘interesting how?’ Lucas said “It’s Mark you should be scared of anyway. Monsters are small fries next to witches. They’ve got all the real scary knowledge. Deals with devils and all that jazz.”

Jongin raised his eyebrows and looked impressed, which did wonders for Mark’s ego. “Won’t you end up in hell?”

Mark shrugged. “Hell is kind of oversold as a concept. It’s not always a pleasant place but neither is the earth we live on now, so I’m honestly not worried about it. It’s largely neutral. Witches get a pretty good deal at the end of the pact. It probably means I’ll end up becoming a devil too when I die, which is pretty fun. Donghyuck likes it.”

“You haven’t considered, like, I don’t know. He was lying to you?”

“It’s not that big a deal for them. Like not worth lying about. And tons of witches have sent messages from the afterlife that everything’s cool. The real downside is that at any point for the rest of my life, my ex-boyfriend can just show up and ask me for favors. And that fucking sucks.” 

Jongin bubbled over into a sweet little laugh, finally looking less worried. “Still badass though. I knew you were too cute to be evil.”

“Oh gee,” Mark said, feeling his cheeks flame up yet again. “Gosh.”

Lucas looked a little suspicious.

“I can feel my cold leaving already,” Jongin said. “That’s amazing.” 

“One of the biggest perks of being a witch,” Mark said. “It’s also the only cure I know. I’m actually really bad at potions. I’m super relieved that’s doing what it’s supposed to and not, like, turning your skin blue or something.” 

Jongin put his mug gingerly in the sink. “Right. But thanks though. Not just for the drink, but for telling me everything.” He rested a hand on Mark’s lower back for just a moment. Beside them, Lucas kneaded dough at an increasingly panicked pace. 

The flatbreads were delicious. Baekhyun arrived for the second half of the meal with his hair in a bird’s nest and ate quietly. He kept looking back and forth between Mark and Jongin like he was waiting for them to do something and Mark fidgeted in his seat, wondering if he knew the jig was up.

“Are we doing stuff for Halloween?” Jongin said. 

Baekhyun looked as him, and then at Mark sweating in his seat, and said, “Hadn’t been planning on anything. Why?” 

“We’ve got the scariest-looking house on the block,” he said. “I bet kids in the neighborhood would get a kick out of it if we went all out and really made this place scary.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun said. “Kids would like that?” 

“Yeah, man. Kid’s love Halloween. And we should have awesome fucking candy to tempt them to come get it.”

Baekhyun sat up a little. “Ah, luring them in. And then…sc-scaring them. That’s something I could get behind. Luring…Let’s do it. I’ll mobilize the troops to, what is it, Party City? Maybe a couple days from now?” 

Afterwards, Jongin left the table to go do some work, and Baekhyun snagged Mark by his sweater before he could follow. “So,” he started. 

“Uh, yessir?” 

“You know, as a siren, I’ve got a fun mind-reading powers, to a degree.”

“Oh man, um,” Mark waved his hands around frantically, “well we didn’t—we weren’t—I guess it’s kind of hard to explain, but like, I didn’t tell him, he kinda came into my room and—”

“So you are hooking up?” Baehyun said. 

Lucas hissed a gasp through his teeth. The water in the sink splashed loudly. 

“Huh? Um. Oh I thought you meant—sorry, what are you talking about?”

Baekhyun leaned back in his seat. “A person’s desires. I can sense a person’s desires. You and Jongin, ah, desire each other.” 

Lucas sucked in another squeaky gasp. Mark needed only a glance to tell him Lucas had his best soap-opera face on, but he had bigger things to worry about. “S-so he…Jongin, um, desires…” Mark pointed to his own chest, “desires…me?” 

“Well, he desires a lot of things,” Baekhyun said. “Success, wealth, sex, knowledge, safety. You know, the normal things humans want. You’re in there. You desire success, power, love, respect, sex, Jongin.”

“Oh, whoa, I don’t need to know everyone’s, um, like that should probably be private.”

Baekhyun stared off into space and hummed a melodious, captivating tone that filled the kitchen like honey. “Lucas wants,” he murmured. Lucas turned around from the sink with a comical expression of horror. “Sex…” Baekhyun said, and then stared blankly at Lucas, “…and…” he said, “…friends?” 

Lucas’s cheeks tinged a dark red. “Don’t I want, like, power? Like Mark? That sounded pretty cool. Or like, I don’t know, money?”

Baekhyun shook his head. “No, I’m not getting anything else.”

“That’s admirable, Lucas,” Mark said. 

Lucas pouted. “Is it? 

“Taemin wants,” Baekhyun started, and then grimaced. “A lot of shit, actually, but mostly blood and power. I’m feeling a really strong pull towards a specific Chanel perfume and an arc-lamp.” 

“Oh my god,” Mark said, sitting down. “What do Taeyong and Ten want?” 

“That’s easy. Yong wants love. Ten wants glory. They’re pretty content though.” He went back to his flatbread crusts, seemingly none the wiser that Jongin was in on everything now.

Mark gave Lucas a look to say ‘close one’ and just got Lucas giving him a slightly embarrassed glance. He gave Lucas the bro pat, kind of a slap on the back, in order to signal his friendship. When Lucas only seemed to deflate further, he gave him a one-armed side hug, practically vibrating with awkwardness. “I’m, um, p-proud to, like, be your friend, Lucas.” 

Lucas nearly knocked Mark’s head off getting an arm around him too, putting Mark’s face right in his armpit. “Thanks, man,” he said, squeezing Mark with a big puppy hug. His voice may have cracked a little. 

Mark left the kitchen feeling a little stunned, but fully satisfied with the warm grin on Lucas’s face.

Mark didn’t want to think about how long it had been since he’d done what he was doing. At least not for four months, and not regularly since Donghyuck broke up with him, which always made the period of adjusting uncomfortably long and unenjoyable. He also just didn’t enjoy sitting on a towel on the bed like a dog that got his paws muddy and struggling against the ache in his fingers. He generally avoided this method of getting off entirely unless he was really craving it and preferred someone else to do it anyway. 

With lube cold on his fingers and a blanket thrown over his bare legs, Mark inched his fingers into his own ass. There was no getting out of it. He’d showered just for extra cleanup and waxed his own ass just to avoid tugging on any awkward hair and made a whole weird production on an otherwise pleasant Sunday morning all to find out where Hyuck had put the goddamn pact mark. 

His own butt would not cooperate further, protesting the chill of the house and the weirdness of the mission. “Gawd,” he grumbled, and wiggled in further. His asshole squeezed with uncomfortable sting around his finger. He paused, took a deep breath, and continued pressing.

He figured maybe things would work better if he tried to enjoy it and thrust a little. It hurt. He flinched. It hurt more. He lay with his upper back jammed against the headboard and wrinkled his nose angrily. 

What on earth was he even searching for? It wasn’t like he could see with his fingers. He took another deep breath and tried to ease in further, beginning to run his finger in circles over his walls to see if he could feel a bump, or lines, or warmth, or anything out of the ordinary.

There had only been a handful of times post break-up when Mark had stuck his fingers in his own ass. It had been a year and a half. He was usually drunk and horny in those moments, or at least exhausted. There he was, awake and sober and two knuckles deep with his cheeks blazing and his mouth set in a hard frown as he tried to figure out his ex’s greatest prank. What a perfect crime. Hyuck had known he hated doing this himself. He took a deep breath, relaxed further, and sunk deeper, the warmth almost comforting.

Rudely, he found his prostate first, which usually took him forever. He brushed over it a couple times because he’d fucking found it and he fucking could. His dick plumped a little. “No,” he muttered, “we’re not doing that right now.” 

Just afterwards, twisting a little to the right, he found it. A little circle of magic tickled knowingly against his finger like the slightest electrical charge connecting up his arm, straight to the spot between his shoulders, so clear in his mind that he could trace the shape, though there was nothing physical for his finger to pick up. Donghyuck had tried to put it right on his prostate and missed. 

Mark gave up and grabbed his dick. He was way harder than he thought. Anger spurred quick, sharp jerks and a finger petting mercilessly over his own prostate. The prank was so good Mark was almost impressed, that Mark would never again be able to put his fingers up his own butt without thinking about the ex-boyfriend and the ritual on the floor of his bedroom. 

“Fucker,” he hissed, and then realized that this overwhelming and fast style was exactly how Hyuck always treated his body. He whimpered before he could stop himself. 

God he fucking missed someone playing with him. Jongin, always on the edge of his mind for the past week, popped to the forefront. His thick forearms, the way they’d flex if it was Jongin’s fingers inside him, Jongin’s hand wrapped around his dick. He squeezed his eyes shut and washed out his visions of Donghyuck with those dark, gorgeous eyes and full lips. Jongin’s handsome smile. Jongin’s deep voice purring from between his legs. 

He came shockingly quickly, hips straining up into his own hands, and came down shaking and gasping, not opening his eyes for fear of letting go of the vision until the lube got too sticky and cold to ignore and the alarm on his phone told him he had an hour to get to class. 

Mark realized he may have gotten a little rough with himself as Lucas’s truck rolled a little too fast over a speed bump and he had to choke down a pained gasp. His ass ached. Now that he knew where the mark was inside him, it was like he could feel it all the time, just to the side of his prostate, just barely not touching, keeping him a little on-edge all the time. 

Jongin looked at him his eyebrows all scrunched up with concern and Mark gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and not one consumed with the panic of having just done dirty things while thinking of the man in front of him. 

“I hope Baekhyun’s okay,” Lucas said. He’d had to drive the three vampires over. “They seem a little too excited about this.” 

That distracted Jongin from the intensity of his worried gaze. “You don’t think this is a bad idea, do you?” Jongin said. “I just want kids to have fun, but they aren’t actually going to be luring people in, are they?” 

“I think the guys just like the idea of being a haunted house publicly for a little while. And Taemin loves decorating. Like, really loves it.”

Inside, the vampires were already agog over the front display of lawn ornaments and fog machines. “We could put one around the edge of the house in the thick bushes,” Ten said as the rest of them walked up behind. “Or under the porch. And I bet it would be a great in our bedroom. Imagine the ambiance.” 

Taeyong was inspecting the plastic tombstones. “Taemin, this reminds me of your grave. Remember?”

“Ah yes, similar shape, but it’s so very small,” Taemin said. “Mine is quite grand.”

Mark cleared his throat. The three vampires turned around, caught sight of Jongin, and all burst into awkward giggles as if to convince him they’d been joking the whole time. Baekhyun was too engrossed in various skeleton props to notice. 

The store was nearly empty on a Monday mid-October night after most children went to bed. A couple wandered around the costumes in the back and two men checked out large yard pieces further down, but the rest of the place seemed clear of anyone but employees.

“We at least need tons of fake cobwebs,” Jongin said. “And I was thinking we could set up a scene on the porch.”

“A scene?” Taemin said, eyes glittering. “An enactment? Portraying, perhaps, a bite? Would we invite volunteers?” 

“You do realize it’s going to be mostly children, right?” Mark asked. 

Taemin said, “Oh,” and frowned at the shelves of decorations. “Well that’s no fun. They’re too small and their flavor is awful. Why the hell are we doing this?” 

“Whoa, look at this!” Lucas said. “It’s a glittery spinning projector thing with bats in it!”

Taemin swooped in looking absolutely delighted. 

“I want hanging ghosts,” Baekhyun said, charging down the aisle with a manic expression and arms full of white gauze. “A whole flock of them. Lucas can put them in the tree out front.”

“There’s a witch with a cauldron over here,” Ten called. 

“I’ve already got that covered,” Mark said. “Like with props. I’ve got tons of, um, props.”

“And we can set up a scene on the porch,” Taemin said. “Just acting, if we must.” He leaned into Jongin’s shoulder, closer and closer until his chin almost rested on Jongin’s arm. “How do you feel about the _Vampyre_?”

Jongin swallowed and looked to Mark for support, who shrugged. “Uh. They’re…cool,” Jongin said. “Maybe you could go for kind of a Nosferatu look?” 

“Aurgh,” Taemin hissed, clutching at his hair and twisting grotesquely, “a plague on that hideous creation.” 

Taeyong walked up holding a sexy nurse costume. “This is what Halloween is about these days, right?” he said. 

“Oh, I want to be a sexy pirate,” Taemin said, and rushed off, only to be frightened to the floor by Lucas wearing a rubber wolf mask. 

They left the store with sixty-dollars-worth of fake web, every iteration of fake tombstones they could get their hands on, a fleet of hanging ghosts, one of those animated hands that grabbed the ground, and a spooky bat projector. Baekhyun snagged some small spotlights to put in front of graves and under the bushes. Only Jongin bought a costume, some sort of black robe and cloak set and some pale face paint to help him be a haunt on trick-or-treating night. 

“Do you think they sell sexy werewolf costumes?” Jongin asked on the way back.

Lucas chuckled. “Isn’t ‘sexy werewolf’ redundant?” he asked, and then kept chuckling to himself for a moment. “Naw, I’m kidding,” he said. “There are probably sexy werewolf costumes. I don’t really need one.”

“’Cause I was just thinking,” Jongin said. “I’ve seen plenty of sexy vampire costumes and tons of sexy witch costumes, but I’m not sure I’ve seen a sexy werewolf costume.”

“Oh yeah,” Mark said. “Sexy witch costumes. That’s a thing. It’s always, like, so weird to remember that regular people have, like, their own ideas about what this stuff is.” He could see Lucas’s pout in the rear-view mirror. “I’m sure there are some,” he said. “It’s not just vampires and witches that get to be sexy.”

“Werewolves are totally sexy,” Jongin said. “Like, have you seen Teen Wolf? Jacob from Twilight?” He nodded thoughtfully, “An American Werewolf in London, The Wolf Man, I was a Teenage Werewolf? So many sexy wolves.” 

Lucas beamed. Mark pouted. “Sounds like you really like werewolves,” he muttered. 

“How would you even do a sexy siren concept?” Jongin asked, oblivious.

“Mermaids?” Mark guessed. 

“We should get Baekhyun in a mermaid costume.”

“Werewolves don’t need to be sexy costumes because the concept is already sexy.”

“Furries are a thing,” Jongin said. Lucas braked at a stop sign so fast that Mark lost his breath to his seatbelt. His ass dropped back into his seat with a pang of pain.

“Oh, sorry,” Jongin said. Lucas scowled at him. 

Back at the house, Taemin stood on the font walk with his arms spread wide, surveying the house like a lord at his castle. “Time to terrify some children,” he said. 

Mark hadn’t expected them to get to work on decorations immediately, but Taeyong was already coming around the side of the house with a long extension cord. Baekhyun sat on the porch railing dragging the fake webbing out of the package. Lucas grabbed the pile of hanging ghosts and began ripping tags off. He climbed straight up the trunk of the tree and out onto one of the bare branches to dangle the ghost right above the front walk. 

“Dude,” Mark breathed. “Kids are gonna love us.” 

“You know what else we should do?” Jongin said. “Set up creepy clues in public places around town that lead back to this house. Get a real Halloween mystery going.” 

“At a certain point this gets actually creepy,” Mark said. 

Jongin just laughed. “Mark, this house hit ‘actually creepy’ level a long time before you got here.” 

Sure enough, Mark had only to start paying attention to realize what kind of whispers went around about the house at the end of the street. For his first ever successful venture into his crystal ball, he explored the town for mentions of the old house at the end of the road. He glimpsed two mothers chatting on a front porch, giving suspicious looks towards the house at the end of the street. Two dads were passed it at a walk and nodded in approval. Another woman and what seemed to be an older daughter passed and pointed and giggled. Mark decided they needed to do better. 

Far more satisfying was the vision of four boys at the end of their block staring in the direction of the house from their bicycles and whispering to each other, pointing and inching towards it like they couldn’t dare each other to go closer. 

“Whoa, are you actually Seeing stuff?” Mark heard. He shook himself out of the vision and looked up at Yeri. The room was exactly where he’d left it, nine students and a teacher all sitting around little tables and staring into glass balls, except Yeri, Lydia the Gifted, and his professor were all looking straight at him. A couple other students glanced their way. “You’re, like, grinning like a dumbass,” Yeri said. “What gives.”

“I’m trying to see what people think of our Halloween decorations,” he whispered back. “They’re a hit!” He gave Lydia a thumbs up. 

Yeri’s eyebrows flew up under her bangs. “Wow,” she intoned. 

“Hey now—” Mark started. 

“No, literally,” Yeri said. “I’m actually impressed. She really taught you something, didn’t she?” 

Mark nodded. “Yeah, she really helped.” 

Yeri pouted like she was disappointed to hear it, but as Mark went back to the scenes in his crystal ball, he thought he saw her hiding a proud smile behind her hand.

At the end of classes for the day, their professor got up from her seat at the head of the room to address the class. “Don’t forget, your proposal for your All Hallows Day ritual is tomorrow. I’ve emailed everyone a list of approved projects and the parameters for choosing one of your own. I’ll be meeting with everyone individually to talk about your choices. Group rituals are allowed, but only with my explicit permission. And Mark, meet me after class.”

“Fuck, I forgot about that,” Mark hissed. 

“Me too,” Yeri said. 

“And we’re planning this whole Halloween shebang the night before too. I’m going to be handing children candy and pranking teenagers till at least midnight.” 

“Sucks,” she said, and then shoved some stuff into her bag without looking at him. “Actually that sounds super fun,” she said. “Can I come hand out candy with you? There aren’t going to be any trick-or-treaters around my place.”

“Oh my god please,” Mark said. “And moms will probably be happier if there’s a girl there. It’ll look less like a frat house.” 

His professor waited for him at her desk, turning a crystal over in her fingers, her long nails glinting in the light. “Yes, ma’am?” he said. 

“There’s been a change in your aura,” she said, “and in your magic. A strengthening. Power.” She cleared her throat and put the crystal down between them. “I want to make sure—no, I want to ask what the change is.”

“I, uh—”

“Not to be nosy,” she butted in. “I’m very pleased to see you picking up new magical techniques and I’m not alarmed quite yet but it’s my responsibility as your professor to check. I do not think you’re the kind of witch to…meddle too much. Or go to far.”

Mark swallowed. “No, I just, uh, got some tutoring from Lydia and got some good pointers.” 

“From Lydia!” the teacher said. She sat very straight. “Well, she is one very gifted young witch.” She seemed a little put out. 

“Yeah, uh, she had some good tips about, like, masculine magic. Turns out it’s not actually that different?” he said. “It was kind of just, like, finding my center of gravity? Like it’s in my shoulders, kind of, and not my gut. Does that make sense?” 

“I had no idea,” she said, leaning forward in fascination. “I’ll have to ask her about that. Hm. She comes from one powerful family so I’m not surprised she knows a little extra, but really? That’s all it was?” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Thank goodness,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I thought you might have made an eldritch pact with a Dark One for stronger access to magic. I’ve had some of my poorer students take that road before and it always breaks my heart.”

“Whoa, you can do that?” Mark breathed. 

“No!” she said, almost pushing her chair back from the desk. Her cat flew from its hiding place on a shelf and scampered out of the room. “You would no longer be a witch!”

“Whoa.”

“Sorry.” 

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What’s a Dark One?” he said.

“I cannot tell you!” She gripped the edge of her desk, her expression haunted.

“Got it. Well, that’s, um, terrifying. I guess…I should go figure out…what I’m doing? For All Hallows Day? Or like…I gotta get Lydia that owl. I’m gonna go.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mark Lee,” she said, her voice a low and retched hiss, eyes still far away and knuckles turning white under her grip on the desk. He rushed out as she sputtered and grumbled behind him, still locked in some sort of internal madness. 

It had been a few days since Mark had time to play games in Jongin’s room. He could hear the noises across the hall, Lucas’s loud voice and Jongin’s soft murmur, the general buzz and tinkle of a fighting game. He clutched his hat lower around his ears and tried to focus on the proposed rituals. 

Ritual for Calling a Dead Spirit, which involved communicating with the deceased. Ritual for Absorbing Moonlight, which involved holding its ghostly power for a season. Ritual for the Knitting of Bones, which created an animal skeleton companion for a year. Ritual of Death-Seeing, the ability to find dead things and see spirits for twenty-five hours. 

The last two sounded the most fun. He’d have to hold onto the other ideas for future years. In any case, he’d probably end up deciding based on what would freak his housemates out most, probably death-seeing where his eyes would turn black and he’d be able to follow the vampires every move for a day. 

He was having a hard time resisting the thought of a bone owl companion, but that might be too conspicuous, and he had promised one of its feet to Lydia. He didn’t have another complete skeleton to use.

Across the hallway, Lucas guffawed. Mark sulked.

They still hadn’t talked about the night of the bathroom flood, already a whole three days past, the way Jongin called him cute, touched his lip, and called him babe. He had known then that Mark was a witch. He had known and done it anyway. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to try freaking out his housemates, not with Jongin tenuously within reach, just a little too distant and a little too unknown. 

A while later, and before Mark had managed to begin his formal proposal for why he wanted to do the Ritual of Death-Seeing, he came back up to his room with a cup of tea and ran into Lucas just leaving Jongin’s room. The light beckoned Mark forward and he imagined himself walking in with his tea in hand and sitting down on the bed and asking Jongin out on a date. 

The act of standing in the dark and staring at Jongin’s door summoned Taemin right up out of the floorboards. “Like a siren-song, it is…” he breathed right in Mark’s ear, who shivered violently and nearly spilled his hot tea down his front. He turned and found Taemin’s blissful expression, a deep red glint to his eye. “The smell,” Taemin continued. “His captivating beauty and strength.” 

“Sure,” Mark said.

Taemin sucked in air through his nose. His lashes slammed closed and he moaned sensually. Mark shuffled a half step away. 

“His innocenccce, his youth…” 

“Buddy there’s a lot to unpack there.” 

“Oooh I hope he’s a virgin.” 

“He’s not.” 

Taemin’s gaze snapped to Mark. “What?”

“He’s not a virgin.”

Taemin rolled his eyes. “God damn it. Young men these days. So hard to catch a fresh one.” 

Mark didn’t bother to hide his repulsed expression. 

Taemin gave him an intense side-eye. “Are you a virgin?”

“Hate to break it to you, man, but no.” 

“Hm. Never would have called that.” 

Mark took his tea and his injured pride and holed himself up in his room for the rest of the night. 

“On Halloween night,” Baekhyun said, tapping his pen against the large sketchbook in front of him. “Your assigned roles are…um…Triple T will be fake v-vampires.” He glanced around the table with an eyebrow raised to signal to everyone that he was acting. Jongin hid a smirk behind his hand. “They’ve already got their costumes and everything. Fake blood. Um. You won’t be directly at the door. I want you all to set your scene down on the dark side of the porch, so it’s only kind of within view of the trick-or-treaters. You can also roam around the yard. Don’t go too far from this property, please. The last thing we need to be charged with is trespassing. And no…real blood? Haha? But I’m serious though.”

The vampires leaned all their heads together and began hissing like a basket of snakes. The other four waited for their pep talk to die down a little before continuing. Lucas was openly on his phone. Baekhyun looked like he was walking on eggshells. Jongin was sitting so close to Mark on the crowded bench that their thighs touched, and Mark was spending every available second absorbing the wild difference in width between Jongin’s extremely thick leg and Mark’s thin one. 

“Lucas, you got that, uh…werewolf mask, right?” 

“Huh?” Lucas looked up from his phone. “No? Why the hell would I get that?” 

Baekhyun lowered a piercing glare at him from behind his pen. It looked a little like he had a mustache. 

“Oh!” Lucas said. “Uh…” He looked helplessly at Jongin and Mark. 

“You can go back and get it,” Mark said, and winked with the eye not facing Baekhyun. Lucas nodded while wearing the most ‘what the fuck I don’t get it’ look Mark had ever seen.

“You’re our jumpscare man,” Baekhyun said. “Be a fake werewolf. And haunt our yard.” 

“Sure, sure,” Lucas said. “Can I hand out candy for at least part of the night?” 

“Why on earth would you want to?” 

“I like kids?”

Baekhyun looked around at the rest of the table to make sure everyone had heard that correctly. The vampires all looked baffled. Jongin and Mark looked as straight-faced as humanly possible so that Baekhyun might pick up on the hint that that was a normal thing to like. “Uh, okay, if you can get in and out of costume fast enough.”

“Baekhyun, I won’t be in cos—” 

“OKAY!” Baekhyun interrupted, just as Mark elbowed Lucas. Lucas seemed to remember that they were still hiding that Jongin knew and slapped a hand over his mouth. He then yanked it away and went back to his phone while trying not to look too alarmed. “And Jongin, you were going to be a…?”

“Grim reaper.” 

“Right, those exist,” Baekhyun muttered. Jongin slid his eyes over to Mark with a questioning look that was maybe a little too thrilled. Mark, who did not actually know if grim reapers existed or not, and was not really paying attention with Jongin’s body heat that close, shrugged. 

“And you’ll be haunting the path up to the door, right?” 

“Yeah,” he said. “And sometimes leaping out of the fog.”

“Great,” Baekhyun said. “Absolutely wonderful. You’re the best. So, Mark.”

“Huh?” 

“You’re dressing as a…witch, was it?” he said in a theatrically doubtful tone. “And your friend will be with you? Also dressed as a, ah, witch?”

“Uh, yeah. Um…” As Mark tried to get his brain back on track by waving his hands around, his palm landed right on Jongin’s thigh. Before he could yank it back like he’d touched a hot stove, Jongin caught it by the thumb and held it there. “We were gonna, uh, like, we were gonna—” he ran out of breath and coughed a little, hand still trying to figure out whether to put as little pressure as possible on Jongin’s thigh or just own it and press down. He bit the bullet and dropped the tension, letting it rest there. Jongin’s hand slid over his. 

Mark could feel the eyes of the entire kitchen on him, three sets glinting red, one dark and overwhelming. Baekhyun was nodding as if in solidarity like he thought Mark was struggling to come up with a lie. Mark was pretty sure Lucas was staring right at the hand on Jongin’s thigh but couldn’t turn to look. Pure heat flooded his cheeks with a speed that made him wonder if the vampires could smell it. “S-sorry, what was the question?” he said. Jongin seemed to be leaning forward on his elbow, trying to get into Mark’s line of vision, but Mark refused to look away from Baekhyun’s face. 

“You and your friend on Halloween,” he prompted. 

“Yeah, okay. Um. We’ll be witches—that is, dressed as, as witches, uh…on the front porch, um…”

Jongin’s fingers slid between his. Lucas brought his phone within three inches of his face. Baekhyun gave him a deep encouraging nod. 

“Handing out candy,” Mark managed. “She’s Yeri. Her name is Yeri. Yeri and I will…I think we wanna be cute witches? Like, not ugly?”

“Are you sure?” Baekhyun said, leaning forward. “Because if we’re going for scary, like, I think you should go out with the warts and stuff.” He whipped his gaze to the vampires. “That’s what people think witches are like, right?” he said quietly, as if Jongin couldn’t hear him. “Like big noses and bad hair and green skin, right?” 

“I, uh, think that, um, parents and kids, are gonna, like, they’ll be happier if, like, well, um.” He was beginning to think he might pass out. The thigh under his fingers was thick and hard and way too big for his hand to span. The thighs of a baseball player. Mark rubbed his free hand over his burning face and realized he was shaking. Could Jongin feel the shake? “Like us and the candy are a lure, right? I know it’ll make, like, all the scary stuff seem more fake…” and here he looked significantly at Baekhyun, “but if it’s all too scary, um, we’re only gonna get teenagers, I think.” He took a deep steadying breath. His hand was having such an intense experience it was starting to go numb. 

“I like your thinking,” Baekhyun said. “Done and done. Cute witches. Right.” 

“Baekhyun, darling,” Taemin said. “Whatever will you be doing?” 

“Uh, special effects,” he said, and levelled his own very significant look around the group. “You know. Making sure the smoke machines work and turning on spooky lighting in the house and…sound effects.”

“You won’t be in costume?” Taemin said. “I hear that’s—I mean I remember that being most of the fun.” 

Baekhyun started doodling thoughtfully on the still-empty sketch pad. “I mean, I did like that sexy nurse costume, but I also liked the sexy cop costume. Hm. I could always cop out and be a zombie. Or a corpse. In any case, I won’t be on the front lines very often.”

“Undead police officer?” Lucas suggested. 

“Hired stripper on his way to a booking? Who knows…”

“This is a children’s holiday,” Mark said. “Speaking of getting the cops called on us.” 

“That reminds me,” Baekhyun said. Some unusually unearthly flint entered his unblinking gaze. “If you find anyone sneaking around our house beyond the front yard, and I mean side-yards, back-yard, and up to one-hundred yards back into the woods, I want you to terrify them in ways they can’t imagine being terrified, and I want there to be real rumors when this night is over.” He glanced up at Jongin and then added, “All in good fun, of course.” 

At some point in the speech, Jongin’s grip on Mark’s hand had turned nearly bruising. Mark tried to breathe. 

Afterwards, Jongin pulled him and Lucas into his room and braced his hands on his knees, looking a bit worn out. “Woof. That was some, um, siren shit at the end there. I’m a little.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “What did he mean?” he asked, looking suspiciously delighted. Mark was beginning to wonder about his reactions.

“I think,” Lucas said, “he meant we can pull out all the stops on our disguises and really go ham. Like go full monster. Don’t bother to make it look fake. Really terrify people.” 

“He didn’t mean attack anyone,” Mark said. “That’s a house rule. No unwilling victims while we pay rent here. It jeopardizes our set-up.” 

Jongin nodded. “I’d guessed. I mean, I’m not scared of them, but if they hurt anyone I’d going to go full Buffy on them.” 

“Aw,” Mark said. “That’s, like, kinda sweet.” 

Jongin turned his lovely face towards Mark with such a fond expression that Mark felt the heat coming back to his face. 

“Should I go?” Lucas squeaked.

“Actually, no,” Mark said. “We’ve got stuff to talk about, just us three. Hold on, I’ve got to go get something.” 

Back in his room, Mark took a couple calming breaths and tried to shake out the jitters that had taken hold of him. Then he reached into his equipment chest and took out the crystal ball and its carved stand, carefully keeping it gripped in his fingers. He been afraid of dropping it since the day he bought it. He wrapped it in one of his black sweaters and rushed across the hall with it clutched to his chest. 

Lucas and Jongin stood where he left them, both with their hands in their pockets and looking a little uncomfortable. Mark shut the door tight and then flopped down onto his butt and uncovered the ball. 

“Is that—” Jongin said. “You’re kidding. That’s really a thing?” 

“Uh yeah, I mean, I hope so. I only got it to work for the first time, like, yesterday, so…” He settled it on its stand and leaned over it, fingers settled lightly near the base. “I was like, um, looking around the town trying to see what people thought of our decorations, so like…hold on.”

The hardest part of getting the crystal ball to cooperate was concentrating without closing his eyes. They kept threatening to slide shut as he tried to funnel that magical feeling down into his fingertips to wake the ball up. 

Lucas sat down on the floor with them like a tower collapsing in on itself. Mark’s fingers left the crystal for a moment. Jongin leaned in close, looking hard. “You won’t be able to see anything yet,” Mark said. “Neither of you. Oh fuck, I lost contact again.”

He took his fingers away completely and sat there on the ground shaking his arms out and trying to clear his head. He could have sworn the print of Jongin’s thigh was still all over his hand and Jongin sat right there with his long eyelashes, looking fascinated in a way that gave Mark butterflies. 

He put his fingers back on the ball, and this time let his eyes close for a minute to sink into the meditative headspace of opening up his Seeing channels. He let the ball know he was thinking about the house. 

For a moment, all he got was Jongin’s face staring directly up out of the ball, all that was on the surface of Mark’s mind. His cheeks flared up again and Jongin stayed, staring right out at him from the crystal, not a reflection but just the easiest thing the ball could find. He closed his eyes again and tried to focus. 

“What do you see?” Lucas whispered. 

“Nothing yet.”

He opened his eyes and it was Lucas’s face staring back. 

“God this thing is finnicky,” Mark said. He tried to focus on the memory of those boys on their bikes, staring at the house and telling ghost stories. Immediately, a new scene opened. The ball turned black with night, only hints of moonlight poking through trees. “Turn off the light,” he hissed to Lucas.

It went out. Mark glared through the sudden darkness for a moment, struggling to see, and then the moonlight returned and he could make out strange shadows like poorly fit slats of wood. After a moment he made out the distinct jungle gym shapes of the small wooden playground a couple blocks away. A child’s face appeared as he held a phone flashlight under it and said something with a wide, threatening gesture. Several others scrambled away. In the light of the phone flashlight, Mark could just make out a jumble of bikes and coats thrown on hastily over pajamas. 

“Look,” Mark said. He reached out and grabbed Jongin and Lucas’s hands. “They’re telling ghost stories.” 

The men on either side of him gasped, suddenly able to see the image. Only the thrill of actually being able to control the ball kept Mark’s attention off the fact that he was definitely holding Jongin’s hand, that and how sweaty Lucas’s palm was. “Whoa,” Jongin whispered. “I’ve seen those kids around town. What are they doing?”

“They snuck out, probably,” Mark said. “They’re talking about the house.”

Suddenly the image changed and he got parents sitting awake in a quiet living room, just having a calm chat, but Mark knew what they were talking about. He got that brief flash of that mother and daughter laughing at their tree full of ghosts. Lucas made an injured little sound. 

“We’ve gotta up our game,” Jongin muttered, which was so exactly what Mark was thinking that he got a little too excited and lost control.

A dozen neighbors flickered through the image, a couple surrounded by summer and spring settings that told Jongin that the house was subject to talk even outside of the October season. He also saw Taemin standing before his tower window and gazing out with his vision blood red as figures moved through the neighborhood, and Baekhyun alone in the house with his mouth open as he sang and dozens of people stood motionless in the front yard, completely entranced. 

He saw the twisted, monstrous shape of Lucas loping through the woods as hikers crouched behind a tree, clutching each other in their sleeping bags and shaking with fear. 

Lucas yanked his hand away. Jongin’s hand squeezed Mark’s. The image jumbled into flashes of neighbors, Lucas, a bird’s eye view of Mark and Jongin on the landing as Mark clutched the railing and Jongin pressed a thumb to Mark’s pout. 

Before Mark could yank his hand away from Jongin’s, he saw the back of a head of wavy brown hair and two little horn nubs, and then a piece of Donghyuck’s profile as he turned, and then Mark was sitting in the dark with a blank ball and his hands clutched to his own chest. 

The light flipped on and they saw Lucas standing there by the wall with a wild look in his eyes, fur lining his neck and fingers twisted into claws. He was breathing heavily. “Did I hurt them?” he whispered.

Mark reached out and put his hands on the ball. He tried to bring it back, those hikers in the woods. After a long, frustrating moment of blank crystal warping the room around them, he saw the hikers huddling behind a tree and holding each other as an enormous, strangely humanoid wolf moved past them at a cheerful romp. 

He sniffed around, pissed on their tree, and trotted off again. 

“Oh, uh…” Mark snorted. “No, you didn’t hurt them. You almost pissed on them though.” 

Lucas sank to the floor with a huge sigh. The fur retreated from his neck and his fingers stretched out, normal. “Sorry,” he said. 

Far from being freaked out, Jongin reached out a hand and ruffled Lucas’s hair. “You’re a good wolf,” he said, and Lucas smiled.

Mark cleared his throat. “So, sorry about all that,” he said. “I don’t have great control over it, um…yeah, crystal balls are never easy to control, even for the best witches. That actually went really well. It was a super simple topic though. Uh.” 

The vision of Jongin and Mark on the landing on the night they flirted filled his head. He made the mistake of meeting Jongin’s fond eyes and lost his breath a little. “So we’ve got to up our game on the decorations, right?” Jongin asked. 

“Uh, yeah. I was thinking,” Mark started, and then found that he wasn’t thinking at all. “Um.”

“I can do some stuff back in the shed,” Lucas said. 

“Wuh?” 

“Like those graves. They look super fake,” Lucas said. “I can take them and use them as molds for, like, concrete ones. There’s like a shit ton of tools in the shed out back. It’d be fun.” 

“Don’t you have school?” Mark said. 

Lucas shrugged. 

“But that’ll be obvious. We’ve already put them up.”

“We’ll put them out back,” Lucas said. “Fake graveyard out front, real one out back that can barely be seen from the road and can definitely be seen from the woods.”

“You should get some witch props out there,” Lucas said. “Like go out in the woods and find some brambles and throw them around the yard or something. Hide the bases of the graves and just make the place look more overgrown. 

“Oh shit, that’s a great idea,” Mark said. “And I can make fog rocks. That’s a witch thing. It’s like a smoke machine effect but it’s a little stone and it produces a little bit of fog and mist for like, two weeks, which is perfect. It’s like a bath bomb but for the air.” 

“And I can do what I was talking about before,” Jongin said, “you know, about the sigils? We can make some sort of magic-looking mark and put it on some of the graves and stuff and then we can go draw more around town in chalk. Like on that playground or on a lamppost near the school.”

“Can’t we get in trouble for that?” 

“It washes away. Nobody will notice if they’re not looking for it. It just adds, like, a story element to all the decorations, that this is some sort of special place with its own mark.”

“Should we tell the other guys about it?” Lucas asked. 

Jongin immediately shook his head. His hair flopped around cutely. Mark’s heart picked up speed. “Well,” Mark said, “we’ll have to tell them about all the secondary decoration. They’ll help. We’ll be doing it all at night anyway. Maybe not about the other stuff though? Like I feel like they’ll get way too into it. I really don’t want them to get into the idea of purposefully luring people to the house.”

“That’s the whole point of this for them already,” Lucas said. “Jongin, let me do the sigils. Like, no offense, but you’re just not as sneaky at night, and I’m a lot closer to the age of the kids so it’ll be less weird if I do it.” 

Jongin let out an uncomfortable giggle. “Weird? Was it weird?” 

“Well, no,” Lucas said, “it’s fun. But I don’t want parents getting weird about it, and a lot of the parents in this town already know me and won’t think twice about me trying to prank their kids. And I can see better at night.” 

“Got it,” Jongin said. “Thank you, Lucas.” 

Lucas beamed. 

There wasn’t much more to discuss. Lucas left shortly after to begin work in shed immediately, and Mark slowly wrapped up his crystal ball, not yet quite willing to leave. 

“That was so cool,” Jongin said. 

“Oh yeah? This?” Mark let his sweater fall away from the crystal again so they could both see the perfect sphere. “Yeah, I know. I’m so excited. I’ve been trying to make it work for years.” 

“I want to see more magic,” Jongin said. 

Mark gulped. “You sure? I don’t want to scare you off.”

“Um, no. The whole magic stuff, the scary stuff. I kind of…like it? Like it’s just…I like it a lot. I want, um. It gets me really excited.” 

Mark couldn’t help his sigh of relief or his pleased grin, suddenly absolutely sure that Jongin would hold steady no matter how crazy it got. He remembered back when he first touched Donghyuck’s horns and realized there was stuff going on in the world that he’d stopped bothering to imagine past the age of ten, and that he could start believing again. 

The happy thrill from thinking about it came back, the one he used to get all the time but now rarely felt with his skill in magic turned into school work. He wrapped up his crystal ball and hugged it, grinning. 

“You’re so fucking cute,” Jongin said. “Cutest witch ever.” 

“Ah, gosh.”

“Mark,” Jongin murmured, and Mark looked up to see Jongin staring at him with the softest eyes. “How about a date?” he asked. 

Mark had to hide behind his hands again, face splitting with a smile. “Are you sure? Me? I keep thinking, like, I’m not really…Like you’re so hot and I’m…”

“Mark, You’re hot. Let me date you.” 

Mark got a happy tingle all the way to his fingertips. “Yeah,” he said. “Uh. Friday? Dinner in town?” 

“I’ll pick you up at five,” Jongin said. 

“Man, we live together.”

Jongin chuckled his deep, beautiful chuckle. “And you’re going to have to teach me more about that mark at some point.”

“Huh?”

“The one in your ass.”

Mark groaned and dropped the crystal back into his lap, suddenly feeling the presence of the pact mark again, just shy of his prostate, perpetually teasing. “Okay,” he said, “that’s enough. My cheeks are actually going to burn off my face soon.” He stood, taking his crystal ball with him. “I’m going to go cool off.” 

“Is that a yes?” Jongin said. 

Mark let out an undignified whine of shame and desire, then gulped it down. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, even as he wondered if he’d be able to get past even kissing Jongin without swooning away like a Victorian lady. 

Jongin let him out of his room with one last warm rub on the back, and Mark collapsed into his own bed without even putting the crystal ball away, just feeling the warmth of wanting someone again and both loving and hating how hot and dumb it made him feel. 

Mark caught Lydia the Gifted after school as she packed her text books into her bag. The biggest let-down in the magical world to Mark by far was the fact that all his spell books and text books were not beautifully bound, old leather things, but actually self-published books off Amazon: cheap covers, poor design, awkward writing, abysmal typography. 

He commented on that on the walk to Lydia’s apartment. 

“That is why I copy all my favorite spells and rituals by hand into a bound leather notebook,” Lydia said.

Mark found himself, once again, thinking of her as ridiculous with only thinly disguised jealousy. Lydia, unbothered and perfect, lead him into her adorable little cottage of a house in the middle of a block of adorable cottage houses. The living room they walked into was filled to the brim with natural wood and smooth fabrics. Glass lamps sat on uncluttered marble tables. A velvet loveseat was framed by shelves covered in beautiful books and charming knick-knacks. 

“Do you live alone here?” he asked, staring. 

“I do.”

She led him into the most over-stuffed yet well-organized kitchen he’d ever seen in his life. Glass jars sat in honeycomb racks on the open shelving with neat hand-written labels facing outwards. Tools and clumps of herbs hung from the pot rack dangling from the ceiling and the undersides of cabinets. Through the back window, he could see an enormous cauldron sitting over a fire pit. 

“…like what do you do for a living?” he asked. 

“For a living?” she asked. “I do what most witches do.”

Mark’s source of income was a government loan and occasional fast and furious forays into retail during the holidays. “And what’s that?” he asked. 

“Tarot card readings, crystal ball readings, tea leaf readings, potions, seances.” 

“There’s a market for that around here?” 

“That’s what the internet is for.”

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “How do I set that up?” 

“I’ll need more owl for that lesson,” she said. She unwrapped what he’d brought her: a foot, an eye, and several bunches of feathers. “Wow,” she breathed. “I would be happy to give you that lesson too.”

“I need that owl,” he whined. “You know I could just ask the teacher that I’m paying, right?” 

“Yes, you probably should.”

She wrapped the foot in talismans written on little strips of brown paper, and then dropped the eye into a tiny jar of pickling liquid and hung the feathers up on her pot rack. He followed her back into the living room where she put on her electric kettle for tea. She drew a little heart-shaped stone with a silver rune inlaid in it and handed it to him. “For your date, in thanks for the owl.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“I have like fifty of those. Please take it.”

“How did you know about the date?” 

She laid a gentle hand on his arm and said in a very dreamy, very convincing voice, “I read it in the stars.”

“Lydia, I know I’m not a great witch, but I know that’s not how it works.”

“Fine,” she said. “I overheard you and Yeri talking about it.”

“Eavesdropper!”

“You were sitting right next to me!”

The electric kettle came to a boil. She took it off and poured it into two handmade ceramic mugs. Mark hadn’t intended to stay longer than it took to give her the owl parts, but took his mug gratefully and sniffed it, getting a bouquet of herb scents back. He was pleased he could pick out a few, chamomile and valerian and a little bit of cornflower. Also licorice root, which he wasn’t entirely pleased about. 

“You’re an interesting witch,” Lydia said. “The other ladies at school have some rather polarized opinions about you.”

Mark was aware. He could divide the house cleanly down the middle between the girls who treated him dismissively and the girls who were extra friendly seemingly just as a statement. Until recently, Lydia had been the only one sitting right in the middle, above such concerns, neither liking or disliking him.

“Is that what makes me interesting?” he grumbled. “Everyone’s debate over whether I should be there or not?”

“Partly,” she said, “but it’s more that you haven’t let it stop you from trying and you haven’t gotten angry about it.” 

“I mean I get it. It’d be a completely female—or feminine space if it wasn’t for me.” 

“And some witches think witchcraft is feminine only,” Lydia said, “which is a very Eurocentric view, but that is the tradition we’re practicing within.”

“I’m not exactly European,” Mark said. 

She shook her head. “Nor are several of the other girls. I think it’s a productive discomfort you’ve brought to class, especially since you, at least, remain respectful.”

Mark wasn’t sure what the alternatives were, if some people expected him to get pissy and territorial about his claim to witchcraft when some women wanted to claim it. He could understand that point of view, even with its flaws. 

Lydia drank her tea quietly and stared off into space. “You’re not an exceptional witch.”

“Ah. Um. Yeah I know.”

“But you’re not untalented.”

“Um. Maybe?”

“I’m talented.”

“Right.”

“I can feel things,” Lydia murmured, “that others can’t. Magic is like smell for me. I can sense it in the air and know its essence. Even other witches don’t believe me when I try to tell them I can do this.”

Mark swallowed, and not because he was drinking tea, which was still way too hot by his standards, whether or not Lydia had already downed half the cup. 

“I can sense it on you,” she said, “unmastered magic. You believe yourself to be untalented.”

That was definitely a lump in his throat now. He clutched his cup, not daring to hope for some sort of pronouncement of his dormant powers. 

“You can get there,” she said. “You have as much ability as most of the girls in our class. What you lack in focus you will make up for in curiosity.” Her eyes slid across her tea cup to his face, though she didn’t meet his gaze. “Curiosity is dangerous in a witch,” she said. “But I do not think you are one to hunger for power you cannot control.” 

Mark didn’t know what to make of any of that.

“Don’t mess with the kids too much this Halloween, okay?” she said. 

“Oh damn, you know about that?”

“I know everything that goes on in this town.”

“That’s, uh…”

“Kidding,” she said, and snickered quietly to herself. “Honestly, it’s funny how much even witches can be tricked by superstition if you put it in the right tone.”

“I’ll be honest,” Mark said. “You’re kind of scary sometimes.” 

She looked very pleased. “What are you doing for All Hallows?” she asked. 

“Death-Seeing,” he said. “You?” 

“I’m trying a ritual I invented a few months ago,” she said. “I will be attempting to step into the plane between worlds for a few moments to see what’s there.”

“Jeezus.” 

“Our professor nearly refused to approve it, but we had a good talk, and she suggested some more safety measures I could use. I’ll be performing it in the graveyard after dark on the night of November first, and I hope to meet the spirits there face to face.” She sipped her tea slowly as Mark gaped at her. “But the Ritual of Death-Seeing, hm? Does this have something to do with your vampires?” 

And given how shit the vampires were at hiding themselves, Mark was not at all surprised she knew about them. “Yeah, it does. Because I know I’ll be able to see it working no matter what. And it’ll scare them.” 

“That sounds excellent,” she said. “Please tell me how it goes.”

Thursday and Friday passed with rising excitement. Lucas cast concrete tombstones in the garage. He and Mark sanded, weathered, and etched worn names into the front. During the day, Baekhyun and Jongin came out and watched. At night, the vampires leaned over the workbench and gave advice before they headed off to dance at their club for liquid tips. 

Mark and Jongin passed in and out of each other’s spaces with smiles and glances and fleeting touches that made Mark feel like he was being courted. He itched to get things over with and just back Jongin into a wall and climb him like an extra handsome tree, but he knew he hadn’t earned that yet. Jongin was probably just trying him out. Coming on too strong might scare him off. 

And yet when five o’clock on Friday rolled around, Mark was dead asleep on top of his notebook.

“Hu-wuh?” he grumbled, shaking himself. His glasses had slipped off one ear and were hanging halfway down his face. The room had been plenty bright a few moments ago, and now the sun had set behind the hills and only a dim light came through his windows. A knock came from the bedroom door again. He glanced at his phone and groaned. 

“God, Jongin,” he said, opening the door. “I fell asleep on my homework.”

Jongin took one look at his face and burst out laughing. “What?” Mark said.

“Go look in a mirror, please.” 

Mark took a moment to find the light switch and then stumbled over to the mirror on his old dresser. Sharp red lines from where his face had laid on his glasses and paper were etched into his cheek. Some pen ink had printed itself in reverse along his jaw. His hair stuck up completely flat on one side. “Oh man,” he said weakly. Jongin cackled. 

A half hour later, Mark walked out in what he called his ‘modern witch chic,’ skinny jeans, boots, a loose tank top, and a leather jacket, all in shades of black with some silver accents, no ink marks or red lines on his face at all. Baekhyun watched them leave, eyes wide and interested over the back of the couch with a gaze that was so strangely greedy and malevolently mischievous that Mark couldn’t even see him as human for a split second. To his surprise, Jongin looked straight at the monster on the couch, gave him a pleasant wave, and walked past him even when Mark hesitated. 

“Does he look like that a lot?” Mark asked once they were out on the walk amongst the fake graves.

“Less now than when I first moved in,” Jongin said. “Honestly I think that might be his resting face. Took a little bit to get used to.”

The fog rock under the tree was doing good work about their feet. Mist plumed and eddied away from Mark’s black pointy toes. He’d lined the graves with dried grass and brambles to hide their stakes in the ground. Already, the house looked way spookier than it had, and dead leaves had begun to catch in the webbing. 

“You look way too nice for how I found you a half hour ago,” Jongin said. Mark shook his head in utter disappointment, but was beginning to think things could have been worse. At least Jongin began the date poorly muffling giggles every few seconds. 

“So I look nice?” he said, pulling what he could out of the situation. 

“Mhm,” Jongin said easily. “Yeah, you usually look good, but when you make an effort…Mm.” 

“You’re one to talk,” Mark said. Jongin had his thick thighs encased in his own sexy jeans, leather loafers on his feet and a nice casual blazer. The sexy business man and the half-assed goth out to dinner. 

“So how long have we known each other?” Jongin said on their way into town. “Eleven days?” 

“Haha, yeah, something like that.”

“This has taken too long.” 

Mark laughed. “Has it? Less than two weeks?” 

“I wanted to ask you out on day two, so…” 

Mark felt a little bit of imposter syndrome sneaking in like he had somehow tricked this man into finding him interesting. But he’d made no love potions and cast no hexes. “When did you know I was a witch?” he asked.

“I didn’t think you were at first,” Jongin said. “I thought you were normal.”

“Yeah? And then?” 

He smiled a little, looking dreamily down the road. “And then I saw you go into the woods on the same night as Ten and Lucas and come back with a basket of weird stuff.” 

“God we’re bad at keeping things hidden,” Mark muttered. 

“Shit liars, all of you. And then I kept seeing you with your little hats.”

Mark groaned. “That’s such a vanity thing too,” he moaned. “All the girls at school had them so I had to get one. I really shouldn’t wear them. They’re so dumb.”

“Mark, no! They look so good! Don’t stop wearing them.”

Mark swore he would wear the hats every day for the rest of his life. 

Jongin had chosen a little Italian restaurant on the town’s cute Market Street, not so far from the café they’d had coffee at a week or so ago. “Want to sit outside?” Jongin said. “We probably won’t get another evening this nice till next spring.” 

“Oh my god yes,” Mark said. “Pasta outside? Like fuck yeah.” 

The hostess didn’t look terribly happy about sitting them outside, but the string lights over the eating area were turned on, as were the heaters, even though there was only one other group eating outside. The last red dregs of sunset faded at the end of the valley. The tall and handsome young waiter came by and lit the candle on their table and took their drink orders. Mark got ready for some Lady and the Tramp action. 

“I think the vampires might be picking up on the fact that I know,” Jongin said. 

“Oh? Them?”

“Yeah, them,” Jongin said. “Well, let’s be clear. I think Taeyong might be picking up on the fact that I know. Taemin can’t read people for shit and I don’t think Ten pays enough attention.”

“That’s fair.”

“Last night Taemin tried to give me a hug so I pulled my hood up, and Taeyong definitely raised an eyebrow.” 

“Mm, don’t be too careless, I guess. Yeah, I don’t have enough of a read on Taemin and Ten yet,” Mark said. “They like, hang with Taemin and I heard Taeyong call him ‘sire,’ so I guess he turned them, but they kind of stick to Taemin’s tail.”

“I bet,” Jongin said, “and don’t quote me on this, but I bet they were some of Taemin’s, like…is the word ‘herd’? I’ve read some vampire fiction, and like, supposedly that’s like, a group of willing victims.” 

Mark made a face.

“I mean, if that’s what they’re into, no shame,” Jongin said. “They definitely have that club now. I’m guessing Taemin found them out of that, from the few hints I’ve gotten. He’s definitely way older than either of them. I walked in on them explaining email to him once.” 

“Have you, like, been up in Taemin’s room yet?” Mark said. “I think I saw it in the crystal for a second.” 

Jongin shook his head. “I really want to see what the tower is like though. I’m so curious. because he’s into decorating, right? So does he go for super trendy or does his room look like a classic vampire lair. And does he sleep in a coffin? I really want to know. This is a prime research opportunity so I’m trying to figure out how to get him to invite me in—” 

“Ironic,” Mark said.

Jongin snickered and shook his head at himself. “Heh. Right. Well I want to see his room, and so I guess I should invite him into mine just to set the tone.”

“You really want to risk that? Like I know he wouldn’t seriously hurt you, but it still sounds uncomfortable. That seems like something Taemin would be able to take advantage of.”

Jongin raised an eyebrow. “Almost like making a hellish pact.”

“Oh dude. Touché, I guess…but that feels—oh shit, speak of the devil.”

Three vampires marched down the sidewalk towards them in their fanciest party gear. Taemin led the pack with his velvet jacket and red leather pants and the other two tagged along after arm in arm. “Well, well, my darlings,” Taemin said, coming to a stop by their table and pulling up a chair without asking. “What’s going on in this neck of the woods? Could it be, ah, a date?” 

“Um, yeah,” Mark said. 

Taemin evidently had not actually been expected a yes. He leaned back, staring with his mouth wide open, and then had a little whisper with his two sidekicks. He came back to the table. “How delightful!” He said, and indeed his eyes sparkled with evident delight. He laced his fingers over the table. “I hadn’t guessed. And how did this come to be?”

“I asked,” Jongin said. “And he said sure.” 

“Is that how it’s done?” Taemin said. “Very interesting. Those exact phrases?”

“No, sire,” Ten whispered behind him. 

“No…?”

“Not those exact phrases, no. He did not say ‘sure.’” 

“I haven’t ‘asked anyone out’ in ages and ages,” Taemin mused. “My process is a little different. I usually begin with a dance—”

“A mating dance?” Jongin suggested. 

“A—what’s that? That sounds glorious.”

“No, sire,” Ten whispered again. “It’s ridiculous.”

Taemin looked appalled. “Then no. No mating dance. Just a…I’ll show you sometime, dear, but after the vict—date is seduced, I lead them to a quiet spot and, ah, let my body do the talking so to speak.” 

Jongin gave Taemin a look of curiosity so sincere that Mark almost kicked him under the table.

The waiter sidled back up to their table. “Are you three staying for dinner?” he asked.

“Not now, Johnny dear, we’ll be on our way soon,” Taemin said. “I suppose we’ll be seeing you later tonight though?” 

Johnny the waiter turned very red. “I suppose so, sir,” he said. Jongin and Mark both suddenly knew a lot more about Johnny the waiter than they ever thought they would. 

“You should come by sometime,” Taemin said. He reached one long, slender finger out and drew it over the collar of Jongin’s shirt. “I think you’d find it…ever so enjoyable.” Before Mark figure out the look on Jongin’s face, Taemin turned a reddening gaze on him. “Both of you,” he hissed quietly. 

He stood. His two sidekicks followed him down the sidewalk, still arm in arm. Mark, Jongin, and Johnny all remained frozen. 

“A-are you both ready to order?” Johnny finally asked. 

The night began to settle again after they’d both ordered a pasta and had a minute for the mood lighting to do its job. 

“God it’s been a while since I went on a date,” Mark finally said. “Not literal centuries like, um, our buddy that just left, but like, at least a couple years.” 

“Do you think it’s actually literal centuries?” Jongin asked, looking down the sidewalk towards the now distant figures. 

“Decades at least,” Mark said. 

“Your last date,” Jongin said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to change the subject.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mark said. He lifted his Coke and took a sip. Jongin had wine, which reminded Mark uncomfortably of the half-decade that separated them. All the more reason to impress upon Jongin that he was Experienced. “Yeah, uh, my ex and I didn’t do dates a lot, ‘cause we were in high school, mostly, and we didn’t have money or cars. Or places to go. But like…I think my last date was to a laser tag place a couple towns over.” He nodded thoughtfully. “That was fun.”

“Oh my god, laser tag,” Jongin said. “That’s an awesome idea. Fuck.”

“Feeling competitive?” Mark asked, which was braver than he’d expected himself to be. 

“Yeah, a little,” Jongin said. “I was thinking bowling, but fuck, that’s so much better.”

“I could do bowling,” Mark said quickly. “Gosh, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” 

“It’s so cute how you say ‘gosh’ sometimes.” 

Mark was beginning to think he had a pretty unique reaction to being called cute. Every time, something in his chest sparked like a firecracker and he felt the abrupt urge to hide his face. Jongin leaned forward with his chin on his hand and smiled fondly until Mark actually had to pull back and cover his face with a napkin. 

“Like those glasses earlier,” he said. “I didn’t know you wore glasses. You looked adorable.”

“V-very forward of you, sir,” Mark said from behind his napkin, only half kidding. 

“What, your ex didn’t ever call you cute?” Jongin said. 

“Only to make fun of me,” Mark said. “He was cuter anyway.” 

“Can’t imagine,” Jongin said. 

“No seriously,” Mark said. He dropped his napkin in his lap. “That kid looked like a literal cherub, which was wrong because he had horns. And his freaking fluffy hair. And his little voice. And he could act cute like you wouldn’t believe. It was disgusting. Only when he wanted something too. What a sick, evil person. God.” 

“Was it that bad of a breakup?” Jongin asked cautiously. 

“Man, I don’t know,” Mark said. At the time it had felt like the end of the world, but it had been coming for a long time. “He was a literal devil, so he was always kind of a chore to deal with. I think he got bored and I was kind of relieved. You know. After the heartbreak wore off.” 

“A devil. Like a real devil. Fuck, that’s so cool.” Jongin shook himself. “Ah shit, that was insensitive. Sorry. I just still getting used to all of this and I’m so curious.” 

“I mean, I’m glad you think it’s cool and not, like, terrifying, I guess. Didn’t you say you met a devil?”

Jongin got a faraway look as he stared into his wine. “Uhhhh yeah just a couple months ago. I was still figuring out the whole vampire thing and she was…something else. She bought a bunch of kitchen equipment.” 

Something about that bugged Mark, but he was more interested in the vampires. “How’d you figure it out?” he said. 

Jongin laughed. “How could I not figure that out? They’re never out of their rooms when the sun’s out, their eyes glow red sometimes, they look like marble statues right down to the bloodless pale skin, they never eat or drink anything but suspiciously bright red wine, and they hiss at everything.” 

Mark buried his face in hands and sighed.

“And Lucas going in and out of the woods with or without clothes at all times of the night is pretty consistent with all the werewolf stuff I know of,” Jongin said.

“Right. Yeah, I don’t know why they even tried hiding.” 

They leaned forward across the table as they talked, keeping their voices low in case people passed. It brought Jongin’s face so close over the candle, a firelit glow on his cheeks and glittering in his eyes. The star struck flutters wouldn’t leave Mark’s stomach. “The devil I met didn’t even bother to hide her horns,” Jongin said. “After that I had no excuse not to just believe it.” 

“The devil you met…uh…” Jongin cocked his head to the side with a precious little smile and Mark’s brain fizzled slowly. “Um. Yeah, Hyuck couldn’t hide his horns when he first started growing them,” Mark said. “He faked a concussion and wore a helmet to school for a full semester. It sucked. Even when he learned to hide it, he always grew his hair out to try to hide them. It’s not always easy.”

“Even you’ve been having a hard time hiding it,” Jongin said. 

“I kind of don’t want to.” 

With that, Jongin reached across the table and took his hand, ever so gently, in his long fingers. Mark’s throat went dry all at once. He stared at the beautiful hand engulfing his and struggled not to squeal. 

“And what about that guy on your baseball team?” Mark managed after a long while of trying to get his head to stop spinning. “The guy you were hooking up with? Still sad about that?” 

Jongin smiled like he was pleased Mark remembered. “You know, I think I’m over it,” he said. 

“What’s his name?”

“Sehun. He’s a brat.” 

“You like that? Brats?”

“Oh my god,” Jongin laughed. “I mean, I guess so. I—”

But Mark didn’t hear the rest of the statement. Down the very same sidewalk that had recently carried the vampires away marched Donghyuck. 

Mark thought he was seeing things, but there he was, long-legged and handsome as ever. Dark fluffy hair and his big eyes. Mark recognized with mortification that they were wearing almost exactly the same outfit. He recognized a bit too late that he and Jongin were still definitely holding hands right out in the open where Donghyuck could see it. 

Donghyuck almost missed them, but as he drew level with Jongin, he looked up suddenly and stopped short. They locked eyes. Mark opened his mouth to ask something like ‘when did you get back in town?’ or more appropriately ‘why the hell are you back in town?’ but before he could speak, Donghyuck’s gaze whipped to the hand, and then to Jongin. 

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, and then stormed off without letting Mark get a single word in. Jongin gaped after him. His hand slowly withdrew from Mark’s grip.

“Speak of the devil,” Mark whined for the second time that evening, and this time, he meant it. 

Despite everything, the date didn’t feel like it had gone too badly. The food had been delicious. Johnny had been hilariously awkward for the rest of the evening. Jongin insisted on paying since he’d done the inviting. A serious chill had snuck into the night air but Jongin proposed a longer walk around the neighborhood anyway to tour the spots that Lucas had marked. 

“Shouldn’t we be doing this while school is in session?” Mark asked as they skirted the edge of a playground trying not to be seen. “We already know those kids sneak out at night. Like. Maybe we should tell their parents or something?”

“I’m not a nark, are you?” 

“That’s not what that word is for,” Mark grumbled. “This is about kid safety.”

“They’ve got a friendly neighborhood Lucas keeping an eye out for them,” Jongin said. “They’re fine. Here it is.”

The white marks stood out in the dark, crinkly on the tree bark and a little messy. They’d kept it simple and easy to draw: a circle with a spiral inside and four basic runes in the cardinal directions. “What, on a tree?” 

“We thought it would be too obvious on a public structure, so it’s just within view of the playground,” Jongin said. “It stands out against the trees so hopefully people will come and check it out.”

“We’ll be lucky if anyone notices at all,” Mark said. 

“Are you kidding? I would have lapped this shit right up as a kid.” 

“It does all feel very _Stranger Things_,” Mark said. They began the trek back to the main road. 

“There’s another nearer to the middle school,” Jongin said. “And he said he made another out of rocks in the park to the west.” His fingers tangled idly with Mark’s and suddenly they were holding hands. Mark tried not to think about it too hard, tried to resist squeezing the hand to test how firm and muscular his fingers were. They were rougher than expected, probably from handling baseballs and bats so frequently. 

“I want to see you play,” he said. 

“What, baseball?” 

“Yeah, baseball. You watched me do, like, my crystal ball thing, so I wanna see your baseball thing.” 

Jongin’s teeth were only a little more visible than his face. The moon was nearly new and they relied on the barest bit of shine and the occasional street lamps to light their way. Mark supposed that was good. Nosy neighbors wouldn’t see them passing through the park to see the mark on the ground, though Mark could barely see it either when they got there. 

“It’s actually nice out,” Mark murmured as they stood there in the grass, facing the almost invisible flower bed. “Perfect temperature for walking.” 

Jongin’s big, warm hands slid around Mark’s waist from behind until his arms wrapped Mark in a cozy hug. “Sure you’re not too cold?” he asked. 

“I’m so fine.” 

Lips brushed the back of Mark’s neck. Mark turned slowly in Jongin’s arms, suddenly thankful for the dark that made it so Jongin’s face couldn’t trip him up now. He got a hand on Jongin’s jaw to make sure he knew where he was aiming, and leaned forward till his cold lips brushed heat and Jongin’s mouth molded to his. He suspected his boots were giving him a lift because he only needed to tilt his head just a little to meet Jongin’s mouth exactly. 

“God, Mark,” Jongin whispered. Mark could only breathe a little whine in return, too busy rolling his body forward and feeling Jongin’s arms tighten to keep him close. One hand slid down, gripping Jongin’s arm through the blazer. The other got warm on the smooth skin of Jongin’s jaw. 

Jongin’s mouth travelled down Mark’s jaw and neck. The sky sparkled over them, rimmed with streetlights but speckled with stars. Mark blinked slowly up, hardly seeing as he clung and felt the chill catch on the spots Jongin’s mouth passed. He wrapped a hand in Jongin’s hair and let himself be kissed. 

Eventually Jongin mumbled something about being tired. “Okay,” Mark said. He got one more slow kiss out of Jongin and then pulled back. He figured he probably had a semi in his pants but that didn’t fit the tone or the temperature so it was easy to ignore.

Mark checked his phone just before they reached the door. “It’s nearly midnight,” he murmured. “Wow.”

“No wonder,” Jongin yawned. “Past my bedtime.” 

“Old man,” Mark said. He stepped forward to unlock the door and felt a hand slide down over his ass. He huffed a small laugh. “There’s nothing there.” 

Jongin made a mock noise of disappointment. He reached around Mark and held the door shut for a moment so he could leave a line of kisses down the back of Mark’s neck. 

Mark had been right. His brain lost most of its function when confronted directly with how ridiculously hot Jongin was. As soon as his face was in view, all ability to initiate kisses went right down the drain. He led the way to the second floor with his face burning and his heart pumping at a possibly unhealthy speed. 

At the top of the stairs, Mark paused. Jongin followed him up and stopped, both by Mark’s door. They stood and looked at each other and Mark felt like his chest was filling uncomfortably with helium. Did he want to ask Jongin to come into his room? Did he want to wait?

“I really need to sleep,” Jongin said. “I’m an old man.” 

“Oh. Haha. Right. You don’t, uh, put out on the first date, haha?”

“Only when I’m not serious about a second date,” Jongin said. 

Mark took a moment to figure that out. “I see,” he breathed, heart all aflutter. 

But Jongin leaned forward and Mark fell back and in a moment, those strong arms pinned him against the wall. Mark’s fingers slipped under the blazer just on accident and ran along Jongin’s sides with only soft t-shirt material in between. His eyelids fluttered, completely overwhelmed by the face and the abs and the heat of their chests pressing together. 

“Oh fuck,” he warbled, right before Jongin’s lips pressed against his again. “C-can I make you rethink your, um, policy?” he gasped when Jongin’s lips gave him room to breathe. 

“Maybe if I wasn’t so tired.” Jongin snickered at himself and shook his head. “If you keep going after old men, you’re going to have to reexamine your expectations,” he said. “My bed time is ten o’clock sharp.”

“Why do you have to have a real job?” 

“You really want me that badly?” Jongin purred. 

“Oh…uh.” 

Jongin squeezed him close again. Those strong arms pushed up under Mark’s leather jacket, which had slipped off one shoulder and left it bare. Mark felt strangely sexy, like he could actually entice Jongin in, or anyone else. With a strange rush of power, he wiggled closer and dropped his head back, let Jongin mouth against his low collar and the side of his neck. “I—I want—”

The front door slammed open. They froze. Baekhyun was always asleep by that time. It was way too early for the vampires to be back. It was probably Lucas home from a romp. He’d pass right by the stairs but probably wouldn’t see them. Then he’d go to his room and Mark could grab Jongin by the collar and haul him into his bed. 

Only it wasn’t Lucas. 

“Why hello, darlings,” Taemin said, half in shadow at the foot of the stairs. His eyes glowed a vibrant red and he held the end of a belt like a leash. The other end was fastened around their waiter’s neck. 

“Johnny?” Mark said. 

Johnny cleared his throat and tried to back out of the circle of light coming down the stairs. Ten and Taeyong appeared by both of his elbows and began ushering him up. “Up there,” they hissed softly. Taemin led Johnny by the belt, advancing on them with a wicked little grin on his face. 

“Moving quickly, are we boys?” 

Mark realized that neither he nor Jongin had moved an inch since the door opened and they were still wrapped around each other like a hot dog in a bun. “Uh. Not—this is normal? What are you doing?”

“Bringing home the bacon,” Taemin hissed without a shred of self-awareness. 

When Jongin cracked a bit of a smirk at that, Taeyong stopped on the last step. Ten and Taemin continued off down the hallway with their prey sandwiched between them. 

“Does he know what he’s getting into?” Jongin said in a tone that made it sound like a joke, like a ‘does he know he’s jumping in bed with three of the freakiest motherfuckers on this continent,’ but Taeyong’s eyes narrowed. 

“Do you?” Taeyong breathed. His eyes cut hard to Mark. Even without a trace of red in them, they pierced viciously through him, and then drew back to Jongin. The message was clear, that Mark was as dangerous to Jongin as Taemin was to Johnny. 

Taeyong followed the rest of his coven down to the tower and left Mark sweating in his tank top. 

Jongin let him go. 

For an absolutely excruciating moment, Jongin stood a few feet away, staring towards the tower, and Mark shivered against the wall, suddenly thin and cold in his leather jacket. 

“Wow,” Jongin finally said. 

“Yeah?” Mark breathed.

“I really think he knows that I know,” Jongin said. “I really think he’s going to tell Taemin.” 

“Is that all you’re worried about?” Mark asked. 

“Worried?” Jongin said. “I’m not really worried. Like…you know, I’m honestly kind of curious.” 

Mark drew his jacket carefully back up onto his shoulder, feeling strangely upset. He’d been worried that Jongin might be worried about how dangerous Mark was, but Jongin didn’t seem to have picked up on that at all. He stood in front of Mark, staring into the dark hallway while Mark waited. 

He finally seemed to come back to himself and turned to find Mark still waiting there with his arms wrapped around his own chest. 

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Do you—” _actually want to get bit by vampires?_

Jongin looked completely confused. “Mark are you okay?” 

“Kind of cold, um…” He bit his lip. “You like…are you actually like…so you want them to bite you?”

Jongin honestly blushed. Bright red cheeks, pink ears. He scratched the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t say want. It’s more of a morbid curiosity.” 

“So are you like…into that?” 

“Into what?”

Into the supernatural. Into Taemin. Into Baekhyun. Into literally everyone in the house for being scary, but maybe not Mark. “Uh, vampires, I guess.” 

Jongin chuckled. “Maybe not these one’s specifically,” Jongin said. “Sexy or not, they’re kind of freaky.” Mark let out a little sigh. “Mark, honestly. You’re not curious? Not at all?” 

“Like…no?” 

Jongin looked endearingly embarrassed. “Oh,” he said. The big, broad man wrapped his arms around himself and pouted. Mark stepped forward and wrapped Jongin in a warm hug. He tucked his head into Jongin’s shoulder and held on. “Sorry. That came off as kind of judgy, didn’t it?” 

“Is it really that weird?” 

“Kind of? But like, not weirder than anything else in this house, so…”

Jongin kissed his hair. “Okay,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

“B-but let’s do another date soon?” 

“Yeah,” Jongin said. “During the day next time.”

Mark chuckled. When he managed to extract himself from Jongin’s warm blazer, Jongin walked him the two steps to his room and give him a kiss at the door, and then Mark stood by the crack and watched until Jongin got inside his own room. He tossed his leather jacket over a chair, climbed under his blanket, and lay there staring wide-eyed into the dark a long time after he could no longer hear Jongin getting ready for bed across the hall, thinking about Taemin’s face at Jongin’s throat and Taeyong’s lips at Jongin’s wrist and Ten’s claws under Jongin’s shirt. 

Even as his blood boiled with jealousy, he had to admit it was kind of hot.


	3. Squad Ghouls

The morning began with the steady noise of a hammer on a nail. Mark woke and found he’d slept in his clothes like a person who had been on a much worse date than he’d had. He pulled his phone towards his face and saw that he’d woken up just in time for lunch. 

“Chicken salad?” Lucas asked an hour later when Mark resembled a healthy person with good habits again, all stretched and clean and wearing casual normal boy clothes for once. 

“Ah, dude, you’ve gotta stop feeding me for free. Let me foot the grocery bill soon. Yes please, I’ll take some chicken salad.”

“I put pecans in it,” Lucas said thoughtfully. “They’re in season.” 

“Pecans? Why?”

“Good crunch.”

“Well okay.” 

The pecans did have a good crunch. “Was that all the banging I was hearing an hour ago? You shelling pecans?” 

“What?” Lucas giggled. “No, I don’t buy them with shells on them. Who does that?”

“You said they were in season so I assumed you’d just found them,” Mark grumbled. 

“That’d be so cool,” Lucas said. “I’m a hunter gatherer kind of guy after all.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short, man.” 

Lucas muttered, “Short. Me? Ha.” And went to rinse his dishes with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “Uh, so I was building something this morning,” he said. “Like, we normally work on this stuff at night, but I don’t want to be hammering on things when the neighbors are trying to sleep.”

“Uh-huh. What were you making?” 

“Effigy.” 

“What?” 

“Like a human shape made out of wicker. That’s, like, a common horror thing, right? Wicker? I’ve seen it a few places. I’m making one. It looks like absolute shit, but that should be fine.”

“Isn’t wicker, like, weaving? And not hammering?”

Lucas looked up. “Maybe that’s why it looks like shit,” he said.

It really did look like shit. The head was enormous while the legs were tiny. One arm was longer than the other and it had no shoulders to speak of. Mark wrapped his hands around his cup of tea and nodded thoughtfully. “It might look more human if we burned it,” he said.

“That,” Lucas said, “is exactly what I was thinking.” 

Halfway through the strategic burning, Lucas let Mark take a break from holding the fire extinguisher at the ready.

“Sooo,” Lucas said, sitting in an old chair backwards with his cheek squished against his hand. “How was your date?”

“Good!” Mark said. “Honestly. All things considered. Like…the best date.” 

Lucas looked unusually attentive, even though he was seeing how far forward he could tip his chair without falling out of it. “I hear a ‘but’ in there.” 

Mark considered. “Nothing bad about, like, the date part of the date. There were some…interruptions. The vampires. Um. Yeah, Taemin kinda seduced our waiter.”

Lucas’s chair toppled forward and threw him out of it. He sat down hard on the floor and then quickly shuffled into a good position to yell, “Hold on! What?” 

“Our waiter? Tall guy named Johnny.”

“Holy fuck,” Lucas said. “Johnny as in tall Asian Johnny? Broad shoulders?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Lucas stared off into space with shock. “Wow, we went to high school together. Like, he was a couple years ahead of me. You’re serious? Johnny Suh? Is down with the vamps?”

Mark nodded. “Taemin seemed to know him pretty well.”

Lucas whipped his phone out.

“Hold on, you’re not texting him, are you?”

“What? No, I don’t have his number. I’m messaging him on Facebook. We gotta get together and talk about this. He was, like, my mentor? Kind of? We did this freshman-senior match-up thing and we watched so many vampire movies.” His head snapped up. “Wait. You don’t think that was a kink thing for him, was it?” 

“Vampire kink,” Mark muttered. “That’s a thing. Yeah, probably.” He hefted the fire extinguisher off the floor. “We should get on with this. Oh, and my ex walked by.” 

Lucas took the extinguisher out of his hands with an ease that made Mark think he really should not have been the one handling the extinguisher to begin with. “Taemin’s one thing, but we really need an in-depth discussion about that.”

Mark sat down heavily on a stool. “I know we went to different high schools, but have you ever met a Donghyuck around town?” 

Lucas crinkled his brow and squinted off into space and then pulled up Facebook to do the thinking for him. “Nope, never seen this guy,” Lucas said. 

“That’s my pact devil,” Mark sighed. “He went off to do some shit in hell after high school. Didn’t know he was back.” 

“Wow he’s even cuter than you are.”

“You’re just saying that because you haven’t met him. He walked right past our table last night and was totally weird.”

Lucas put his phone back in his pocket and hefted his blowtorch. “More on that later. We have work to do.”

The fire hazards didn’t stop in the shed. Lucas had the sigil mapped out in a little clearing in the woods that was already mostly dead grass and leaves. “I cleared it out a little but I’m kind of worried about starting a forest fire,” Lucas said. 

It took a lot of magical maneuvering from Mark and a lot of extra lengths of hose before they were satisfied. Lucas drew out the sigil in lighter fluid and set a match to it, then backed up fast and grabbed the hose. Mark got ready with the extinguisher. 

“Okay, looks good,” Mark said. The flames rose about a foot and immediately burned down, captured between the lines of Mark’s inflammable magic powder. “Let’s let it burn for a few seconds to really get the lines in there.” The fire sputtered and dimmed, barely leaving a mark on the ground. 

Suddenly the flames shot up above even Lucas’s height, crackling and roaring like a furnace. Heat blasted through the clearing. Lucas screeched like a real banshee and started spraying the hose in wide arcs through the air. Most evaporating into nothing. Some lashed across Mark’s face. 

Mark just dropped his extinguisher and started searching the trees. 

There was Donghyuck, leaning against a tree not ten feet away, eyes reflecting the flickering fire like little coals. 

“Bitch,” Mark muttered. 

Donghyuck flourished a closed fist like an orchestra conductor and the flames vanished without so much as a wisp of smoke. Lucas’s screams died a couple seconds later to the sad sound of hose water dripping onto bare soil. “Thought you could use some help,” Donghyuck said. 

“Are you just summoned by the mention of your name now?” Mark said. 

“Why? Were you talking about me, babe?”

“Do not. Call me that.” 

Donghyuck looked much the same as ever, tan and flawless and in desperate need of a haircut. His fluffy brown hair caught in his eyebrows. He’d gotten a little thinner since they graduated, which was probably just the loss of baby-fat, but he was wearing a slicker outfit than anything he would have been caught dead in in high school. The tailored suit jacket really did things for him, but so did the black denim and turtleneck, and all the little silver chains. He wore leather oxfords with an excessively pointy toe. 

“Is that, like, professional wear or do you just look like a prick all the time now?” Mark asked. 

“You’re one to talk,” Donghyuck sneered. “When did Pinterest start dressing you?” 

Mark looked down at his spooky graphic tee and excessively long jacket and all the leather straps and silver chains on his wrists and felt rather caught. And he’d thought he looked so normal when he got dressed in the morning.

“Can you believe,” Donghyuck said, leaning off the tree and walking forward to address Lucas, “that only two years ago, this boy owned sixteen pairs of basketball shorts? _Sixteen_.” 

“Hyuck, can you not?”

“Don’t like thinking about little high school Mark?” Donghyuck said with all the threat of someone who had witnessed Mark’s most awkward and embarrassing years. “Scared I’ll tell your new friend about the time you showed up at school wearing sweatpants with cum stains on them?” 

Lucas looked like he’d rather be anywhere in the world, up to and including Taemin’s bed. He wordlessly gathered the fire extinguisher and began dragging the hose back through the woods. 

“They were your pants,” Mark mumbled, hoping Donghyuck was there to drag Mark right down to hell where he belonged. “It was your cum.” 

“Yeah, thank god,” Donghyuck said. “I almost wore those that morning.” Mark snorted. Donghyuck gave him an uncomfortable smile and then looked out across the little clearing rather than meet his eye. His horns had grown at least an inch, curling backwards from the top of his head like two extra fluffy fly-aways in his curly hair. They’d probably actually be long enough to grab during sex now. Mark had always hurt his palms trying. “So, what’s going on here?” Donghyuck said, motioning to the burned clearing.

“Oh yeah, um, we’re trying to, like, prank the local kids for Halloween?”

“Oh, dope.” 

“Yeah, we’re doing this whole haunted house thing. Lucas is a werewolf and we’ve got vampires and a siren in there, so yeah. It just kind of fit.”

“And what’s your boyfriend?” 

Mark coughed. “Uh, my what?” 

“The dude yesterday? The guy who sold my mom seven-hundred dollars of kitchen equipment last month? The guy you were turning on your baby eyes for?” 

“Sorry, my what?” 

“You know, when you make your eyes real wide and you look down and you act like you’re all shy. Don’t think I didn’t see it.” 

“Bro, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Donghyuck rolled his eyes. “Just take me back to the house. I’ve got a demand.” 

“One minute,” Mark said. He took a fog rock out of his pocket and stowed it under a pile of leaves just far enough away from the symbol to seep a low cover of mist out onto one side of it without hiding it completely. Donghyuck tried not to look impressed and failed. 

As they approached the back porch, Mark saw Lucas chatting with a certain brown-eyed salesman and his stomach dropped out. 

“Hey you,” Donghyuck said, “how the fuck did you convince my mom to buy seven-hundred dollars of knives and frying pans?” 

“Uh whoa.”

“You suckered a literal succubus. How did you do it?”

Jongin looked very caught. “Uh, the one with…did she have the gray streaks?”

“You fucked her, didn’t you?” Mark watched in horror as his ex mounted the porch and got right in his new date’s face. “Why are you tall?” Donghyuck demanded. “Tell me if you fucked my mom or not.”

Jongin hunched in and said in a very squeaky voice, “I didn’t!”

Mark knew from way too much experience that Donghyuck could tell if people were lying or not, but even Mark thought that sounded fake. Donghyuck spun around, eyes a solid demon black. “This man’s a monster fucker,” he said. 

The phrase _Monster Fucker_ bounced around the inside of Mark’s skull like a chorus of clanging church bells. “Uh…” he said. Jongin’s full-faced cringe told Mark everything he needed to know. “Like on the Internet? With the Venom movie and Pennywise and all that?” 

“And Teen Wolf,” Lucas said, pouting. “Nothing wrong with being a monster fucker.”

“I said I didn’t!” Jongin said, stronger this time. 

“Your new boyfriend fucked my mom, Mark.”

“Your mom fucks everyone though,” Mark said, trying to ignore that Donghyuck had just said ‘boyfriend’ and Jongin hadn’t batted an eye, and that Jongin had fucked his ex’s hot succubus mom and Mark could never possibly live up to that. “That’s like her whole thing.” 

Donghyuck shrugged. “Yeah? And? It’s the principle of the thing.” He turned back to Jongin and yanked something out of the inner pocket of his jacket. Jongin flinched until he realized it was a wallet. “I want the knife set you sold her. How do I order one?”

“W-what?” 

“I said I want the knife set.”

“Not to gut me or anything, right?”

“Are you kidding? No, my mom fucks everyone. That’s like her whole thing. I’m just offended on her behalf that you managed to squeak seven hundred fucking dollars out of her too.”

“She doesn’t have buyer’s remorse, does she?” Jongin said, sounding very disheartened.

“No, but I think she’s upset she didn’t get your number. Want me to give it to her?”

“Hyuck!” Mark yelled. Donghyuck gave him a disparaging look. “Just tell me what you’re doing here and leave, please.”

“What, you think I’m here for you?” Donghyuck said. “That’s a little conceited. I’m here for knives. Duh.” 

Wordless silence fell on the back yard. Lucas and Jongin exchanged an astonished look. A distant creak and slam of a door echoed through the backyards around them. 

“I, uh, have an order form upstairs,” Jongin said. 

“I don’t have a physical earthly address,” Donghyuck said, still glaring challengingly at Mark. “Is that a problem?”

“Do you have, um, physical earthly money?” 

“Uh-huh.”

Jongin exchanged another look with Lucas, which seemed to give him support. Being dragged to hell felt more and more like a relieving option for Mark. “I guess I can get it shipped here. And then you can come pick it up. Or your mom.”

“Just want to see my mom again, do you?” 

“Hyuck!” Mark shouted. 

“Haha he doesn’t like that,” Donghyuck said, turning back to a beet red Jongin. “Funny. Okay, take me to your order forms.” 

They walked inside. Mark stood there in the backyard for a moment, letting the rage and panic cycle through him, and then knelt down in the grass with his face in his hands. “God, I hate him,” he whispered. Lucas’s warm paw landed on the middle of his back and gave a nice rub. “Thank you.” 

“He’s worse than I ever imagined,” Lucas said. 

“I kind of miss him.”

“Oh no.” 

When Mark felt a little less manic, he walked up to the second story to find Jongin shuffling from foot to foot outside Mark’s door with an order form clutched in his hand, looking a little frantic. “Is he in my room?” Mark said. 

“Mark, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Mark walked in and found Donghyuck trying to fit one of Mark’s precious felt hats delicately over his horns. “Get thee behind me, devil,” he said. 

“Fuck off. You’re going to need an actual spell to make that work.” 

“I’ve got it,” Mark said. A bit of a maniacal cackle slipped through. “I made one. Lemme just find it in my giant chest here.” 

Donghyuck tossed the hat off his head and fled the room. Mark made it back out into the hallway with his banishment spell, a flat black stone with carved sigil on a leather strap wrapped around his hand. He found Donghyuck hastily scribbling on his order form. Lucas was still waiting halfway up the stairs as if afraid to come further. “Is it fine if I pay in cash?” Donghyuck asked.

“I mean I guess, but I prefer card. I’ve got Square.”

Donghyuck drew a gleaming black credit card out of his wallet and handed it off. Jongin rushed into his room with the card. Hyuck shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his back to Mark like a pissy cat. 

Mark stood there and seethed. Donghyuck had done that a thousand times. Whenever he didn’t want to own up to his actions, whenever he had some stupid gripe he wanted Mark to feel guilty about, whenever he was just in the mood to cause some distress and hurt Mark’s feelings, he’d just turn his back and pretend Mark didn’t exist. 

“Hyuck,” Mark hissed, rage making him a little vampiric. “Why the fuck did you put that mark in my ass.” 

To his shock, Donghyuck turned around. Also to his shock, Jongin chose that exact moment to come out of the room and hand the card back.

Donghyuck took it without really looking, still facing Mark and looking, perhaps, a little sincere. “It’s my favorite part of you,” he said. 

Mark opened his palm. The stone nestled in the leather strap flashed white-hot. Donghyuck had time to gasp and flinch, eyes huge in shock, before he erupted in flame and vanished with a puff of brimstone. 

Behind the smoke, Jongin took a quick step back, hands up to protect himself. He gaped at the spot on the floor that still sizzled with heat. Beside them, Lucas pounded to the top of the stairs. “Oh man, the floor,” he whined. 

Mark turned on his heel and stomped back into his room, chucking the used spell into his trash can. His hands shook. He could feel the magic within him surging like disturbed water after the release of the most powerful spell he’d ever used. 

In the hallway, Lucas whispered, “Did he kill him?” 

“I don’t think so,” Jongin whispered back. “Wow, holy fuck.” 

Mark flexed and shook himself, trying to get the magic to still. Deep inside him, the pact mark ached fiercely. 

“What’s that smell?” Baekhyun yelled somewhere off in the house. 

“Um!” Lucas yelled back. “Mark spilled sulfur everywhere?” 

Some silence. “What the fuck? What’s burning?” 

“Mark, I think you’d better come out here and explain this,” Lucas said. Mark turned around and the whole room rocked under his feet. He sat down on the bed and the ache in his ass flared hard. 

“I think maybe I shouldn’t have used that on my pact devil,” he said. 

In an instant, Jongin was at his side, leaning over his bed with those brown eyes filled with concern. “Lay down,” he said. “You’re burning up.” 

“Gotta…oh fuck, gotta call Lydia.” 

Jongin pulled his phone out of his pocket for him and handed it to him. “Babe, that was so hot. You’re sweating so bad,” he murmured. 

“Hot?” Mark croaked. “Oh fuck where’s Lydia my hands are shaking.” As Mark struggled through his contacts, Jongin’s strong hands rubbed down his chest. His phone nearly slipped out of his hands. 

“Is he okay?” Baekhyun asked, coming in. 

“He banished his ex boyfriend,” Jongin explained. Baekhyun made a couple unintelligible noises of confusion. “He was a devil. He thinks it fucked with his pact.” 

“Oh my god,” Baekhyun said. He heard footsteps towards his chest in the corner, then some rummaging. “Fuck, I don’t know that much about healing magic,” Mark heard. He managed to call Lydia. 

She picked up before the first ring was over. “You’re in distress,” she said. 

“Jus—quick info,” he choked out. “I’ll give you owl bits or whatever. Wha happens when you banish your pact demon?” 

On the other end, she took a slow, deep breath and held it. “Oh, Mark,” she finally said. 

“Lydia, what happens,” he said, maybe too loudly and too frantically. 

“It’s fine,” she said over the line. “Nothing permanent.”

“Oh, thank fuck.” 

Jongin’s hands brushed his hair off his forehead, and Mark could feel the sweat wiping away from his head. Already, the room was beginning to tilt. Little light spots spun through his vision. 

“If you killed him it would have crippled your magic,” she said, “but banishing will only make you very, very sick for a few days.”

“Thank fuck. I mean fuck that, oh my god.” 

“What did he do?” she said. 

“He was being an infuriating little shit so I banished him.” 

“Mark, that was metal and admirably petty of you, but you’re about to have the worst few days of your entire life. And please don’t forget he can make your after-death experience pretty miserable if he chooses to.”

“What’d it do to him?” 

“He’s probably somewhere in hell with the worst headache of his life right now,” she said. “He won’t be able to climb back up for a few days at least. He might get sick too. I don’t know.”

“That’s okay then.” His voice had begun to take on a weird, rough texture. Air felt gritty and hot in his throat. The mark in his ass began to burn rather than ache. He coughed weakly. “I’m happy with that.”

On the phone, Lydia chuckled. “That’s my man. Smoke some weed. That’ll help. Normal painkiller will help too.” 

“Thanks oh fuck it burns holy shit. Um. See you on Monday.”

“Oh Mark,” she said, “I don’t think I’ll be seeing you on Monday. Drink a lot of water.”

“Guh. Kay. B-bye.”

“Get well soon,” she said in her floaty voice and then hung up. Lucas yanked his phone out of his hands before he could lock it and started doing something with it. 

“Did I hear her say weed?” Baekhyun said. The lid on his trunk slammed shut. “I got some bomb edibles. I’ll be right back.” He raced out into the hallway. 

“I’m calling Yeri,” Lucas said. 

Mark let out an extremely undignified whimper and squirmed on the bed. “It really fucking hurts,” he gasped. 

“What?” Jongin said. 

“Pact mark.”

“In your ass?” Lucas squealed. 

Jongin’s hands wove between Mark’s fingers and he forced his eyes open to see Jongin leaning over him, so close and so beautiful. “God, I’m so fucking sorry about my shitty ex,” Mark said, and then, “I can’t believe you fucked Ms. Lee.” 

“Wait, are both your last names Lee?” Lucas said. “That’s funny.” 

“It hurts it hurts it hurts.”

“Mark, you’re scaring me,” Jongin said. “Sorry about your ex’s mom.”

“I don’t fucking regret it now get me a goddamn Aleve.” 

Baekhyun came pounding back down the stairs and rushed up to the bed with a little plastic baggy. “He’s sweating buckets,” he said. “Someone go get him water with one of the bendy straws we keep in the top cabinet.”

“That’s probably my job,” Lucas said. Mark’s vision was getting a bit too wonky to see him leave the room properly, but he heard the footsteps clomping out. 

Baekhyun shoved a very weird-tasting gummy past his lips. 

It took an excruciating hour for the gummies to really work, which Mark spent clinging to Jongin’s thick chest and gasping as a wildfire of pain worked its way outward from the mark till it had burned into every inch of his body. The Aleve kicked in a little earlier to dull the burn, and then he was floating in a weird dream space where everything hurt but that was fine, and Jongin’s warmth soaked into his skin in red patches of his awareness. Sometimes Lucas’s enormous hand would tip his head up and force him to drink through the bendy straw. At some point, he fell asleep. 

Yeri’s first words to him when he woke up were, “How could you do that without me there to film it?” 

“O-oh god, oh god, fuck, shit, eughhh Yeri where’s the weed, fuckin weed—where’s—oh fuck—”

Yeri put a gummy in his hand and then more pain pills, then put what felt like a whole gallon jug of water of the bed beside him by the way it dented the mattress. He sat up a bit and slurped through the bendy straw. What came up wasn’t water.

“Guh-gl. Fug. Wus that?” 

“It’s a slippery elm tea with some ash. I was hoping it would nullify the magic a bit.”

Seemed reasonable. Mark choked down some more, wincing. 

Immediately, the burn in his ass eased to just uncomfortable. “Oh wow, that works,” he said. He drank some more of the sludge. 

As Mark’s vision cleared, the details of the room started to come into focus. They didn’t make much sense. “Why’s it dark out? Why are you in pajamas?” 

“It’s six in the morning,” she said. “I’ve been asleep here all night.” 

Mark’s head spun. He tried to sit up and just wilted in pain. His whole body felt like it had been forcefully wrung out, muscles made of sand. His head pounded. He reached for the jug and glugged for several seconds without stopping. “Oh no, I’m dizzy. I kind of don’t feel so good.”

“Ginger chews,” Yeri said, and climbed off the bed. She wore her most ridiculous pink pj’s with teddy bears all over them and had her hair in her Wednesday Adams braids. Full sleepover gear. The stuff she only ever wore when she came to Mark’s house for a planned night of boy talk and face masks. 

“Aw, you got all dressed up for me,” he said. 

“Figured I’d at least pretend I was enjoying myself.” 

“Did Lucas tell you everything?”

“No,” she said. “Your very normal not-boyfriend did. I’m guessing the date went well?” 

“Yes and no,” he mumbled. “Sorry I didn’t text you. A lot happened.” 

She shook her head sadly and for a moment Mark thought she was disappointed in him. “I’ve been waiting for years for Haechan to show back up just so I could banish him and you beat me to it,” she said. “I prepared the spell and everything.”

“Whoa, seriously? You too?”

“He was getting too powerful. Needed to be knocked down a peg.”

“Yeah, damn,” Mark said. “You should have seen it. He had these pointy shoes and he made the flames shoot up in the air like ‘_fwoom!_’ and his horns have gotten longer.” He squirmed, trying to get his whole lower body comfortable. “I was kind of proud,” he said. 

Yeri had also known Donghyuck in high school. She’d been just another Asian in his year, a girl, so he hadn’t known how to talk to her. The day after Donghyuck gave him the mark, she showed up in his house and handed him a stack of instruction books. They’d come with a four-hour lecture. He’d sat on the floor of his room in mute terror the entire time. It turned out that Donghyuck had initiated her into witchcraft almost as a prank back when they were ten and didn’t know what they were doing. She’d thought they were playing pretend until she started accidentally lighting fires and occasionally seeing flashes of the future. They still didn’t like each other very much. 

You know,” Mark said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to feel things inside your ass like this. There’s a big reason why we don’t have normal senses in there.”

Yeri hummed in sympathy. She climbed back onto the end of his bed cross-ways and shoved her face in the pillow. “I need a couple more hours of sleep,” she groaned. 

“Guess I’ll just sit here and be miserable by myself.”

“This is your own fault,” she said, which he couldn’t contest. 

It helped when the weed kicked in. The ceiling got fun to look at. His brain got exciting to be inside. The burn wasn’t pleasant, per say—still an unscratchable itch—but it did feel like some kind of touch right next to his prostate, right where he wanted something. He squirmed and imagined and wished Yeri wasn’t in his bed so he could do something about it. 

Much to his chagrin, visitors filtered in and out of the room continuously. Jongin stumbled in around eight in the morning with his hair all fucked up from being in bed and the thinnest of t-shirts clinging to his pecs. Mark did not have the presence of mind to control his grabbing instincts, so he soon had two handfuls of pec and a very astonished Jongin. 

Lucas came in with breakfast around nine, then lunch around one. The weed wore off. Baekhyun supplied more. Yeri and Jongin took turns wiping sweat off his face. “This is embarrassing,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“This is your reward for being a petty king,” Yeri said. “Even though I wish I could’ve seen his face when you did it.”

“It was real good,” Mark groaned. “He opened his mouth like ‘oah’ and his eyes bugged and he kinda jumped a little. Fucking pointy-shoed bastard.” 

“You really need a bath,” Lucas said. “You’re starting to smell.”

Yeri went in with him. She knew him the best and was the only one who had seen him naked before. She liked girls, he liked guys. It was perfect. 

Mark’s knees nearly gave out from pure embarrassment when she dropped her pants without a hint of self-consciousness. One knee really did give out when she helped him tug his pants down. Oddly, by the time they got in the shower and he was leaning his whole naked body on her to stay standing, he didn’t much care anymore. Not even when she handed him a washcloth to “clean what I don’t want to touch.”

“Kind of want to masturbate,” he mumbled as she washed his hair. 

“Is that like a boy thing?” she said. “Like it’s just something you want all the time? I actually do not want to imagine what about this specific scenario’s got you horny.”

“It’s inside me, Yeri. I wanna…I don’t know.” 

“Mm, this is weird.”

“I’m so sorry.” 

She gave him a naked hug. He wondered how much weirder he’d feel about everything when he was a little less high. 

“I’ll see if I can get everyone out of the room for an hour or two at some point,” she said. 

It didn’t happen. Lucas came in for dinner and stayed forever. Jongin curled up in bed as permanently as Yeri. It didn’t matter much. Mark descended into a painful drugged stupor from which there seemed to be no return. 

His first moment of awareness in hours came sometime after dark to the feeling of Jongin lying face down in bed next to him, pressed right up against his arm, laughing silently. They burn was back, feeling like his body was a landscape flickering red hot, a boiling volcano. He sat up slowly. “Might need more weed,” He mumbled. 

“He’s up, darling, he’s up,” he heard, and then a spot of whispering. 

“Jongin?” he heard Taeyong’s voice. “Are you sure he’s not contagious?” 

“It’s a food poisoning,” Yeri said. “Obviously it’s not contagious.”

“Is that what we’re going with?” Ten muttered a bit too loudly. 

“What is…a food poisoning?” Taemin said to general shushing and then another round of hissing. Mark sat up enough to see the three vampires in ostentatious loungewear, huddled in the hallway. 

“Wus…outfits?” Mark said. 

All three vampires leaned a little away from the door, staring at him in wide-eyed fear. Ten and Taeyong looked at Taemin for instruction. Taemin wrung his hands and stammered. As one, Ten and Taeyong stepped behind Taemin and pushed him right to the doorframe. Taemin balked and didn’t cross it. 

“You can come in,” Mark said. “All three of you.”

“Aha, no. That’s not really the—” a duet of hissing broke out behind. “Right, right, sorry.” Taemin took a large, deliberate step into the room and then gazed around like he expected traps. “The, um, outfits, yes. We heard there was a bit of a, uh,” he glanced back to his minions for support. 

“Pajama party,” Ten whispered. 

“Bit of a pajama party going on in your honor,” Taemin said. “We thought we’d join in.”

“Wow. Thanks, guys,” he said. 

“I think that’s my cue to go home,” Yeri said. “Couldn’t find anyone to feed the cats tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow though.” She slid out of bed and started gathering her things: backpack, satchel of witch goods, pillow. She jammed her feet into boots and tucked her pajama pants in around the sides.

“You’re not changing?” he asked.

“I came here in this, and I’m leaving here in this.”

“Yeri, it’s cold out there.”

“I’ve got a coat,” she said. She gave him an affectionate rub on the head that left him dizzy in his current state. As she left the room, the vampires cleared out of her way as if repulsed. 

“So sweet,” Mark muttered. “Nice of her to come.” 

Another hour or so passed with the steady thrum of pain and the sound of Lucas and Jongin chatting quietly. Occasionally Taemin would say something and the other vampires would either agree or correct him. 

“He’s sweating terribly,” Ten said, not a foot from his face. Mark opened his eyes and Ten flinched back. 

“Am I?” Mark croaked. 

“Mm-hm,” Ten said. He reached out a cautious, pale hand and lay it gently on Mark’s forehead. His cold skin seemed to leach the fever right out of him. His eyes fluttered shut and he may have moaned a little. Ten pressed hesitantly. “Is this—”

“Feels really good,” he slurred. Ten’s hand pressed for a moment, and then another frozen hand cupped his flushed cheek. “Oh my god.”

Ten chuckled a little. “You’re so warm,” he said. “I can feel it flowing under your skin.” 

“Gross,” Mark said. 

He opened his eyes and saw Ten grimacing in panic at Taeyong. Lucas hunched in his desk chair with his phone out. Jongin sat on the floor a few feet away, leaning against the bed with his head thrown back, resting against the mattress, mouth wide open and fast asleep. Taemin’s red eyes were glued to his neck. 

Mark kicked Jongin awake. “Wuh-huh?” He mumbled, snapping to. 

“Bro, you can go sleep. These guys have me covered.” 

“Uh…” he blinked down at his own lap, stretching his head this way and that to work out his stiff neck. Taemin inched forward. “Uh…sleep,” Jongin said. He stood carefully.

Taemin’s thin hand uncurled and gripped Jongin’s ankle. “Shall I walk you to your door, darling?” he breathed. 

“Um…”

Lucas stood suddenly up out of his chair and strode into the little circle, interrupting their gaze. 

“I’m just heading downstairs so I’ll walk him back,” he said loudly.

“Across the hall?” Jongin said. 

Lucas nodded, eyes on Taemin who’s sharp incisors glittered under his pleasant smile. Jongin left with Lucas. 

And Mark was alone and feeling nearly dead with three vampires close at hand. Ten’s hand hadn’t picked up any warmth from Mark’s skin, a permanent little ice pack on his face. “Are you guys seriously staying home tonight?” He asked. 

“O-of course,” Taemin said. “We have a sick housemate.”

“Baekhyun was saying you needed a night shift,” Taeyong said. “Lucas volunteered but he was already awake most of last night.” 

“Anything for our witch,” Taemin said, and followed it with a nervous chuckle.

“Oh my god,” Mark mumbled. “I’m fine. I’m causing so much trouble. You guys can go eat, really.”

The vampires all muttered thankfully, looking legitimately touched. “We can go a few nights without drinking,” Taemin said. “Every night is a luxury we’re lucky to have. Why, back in the day when I lived in Korea I left the house once a week to hunt under cover of dark for fear of the hunters, and I was lucky to get a day or two without thirst.”

“Yeah?” 

“Oh yes,” Taemin said. “Why, I haven’t lived this well since the first World War. What a wealth of blood there was.” 

“What, not the second?” Mark said, not lucid enough to really take in that information.

“It was the second,” Ten muttered. “His memory is all out of order.”

“I took down dozens of Japanese soldiers,” Taemin hissed. 

“And we’re changing the topic now,” Taeyong said loudly. “We’re not going down this train of thought in public.”

“He relocated here during the Korean War,” Ten said, “and hasn’t much bothered with history and current events since then.” 

With Ten’s cold hand on his forehead and the entry of a new edible into his bloodstream, Mark wasn’t in any position to process Taemin’s history, though he seemed more and more like the senile old grandparent whose children had to take care of him. “How often does he talk about the war?” he said.

“Not too often,” Ten said. “It’s mostly fashion with him these days.”

“Oh! The winter collection from Chanel!” Taemin said, and the rest of the hour passed in a pleasant haze of terms like ‘avant-garde’ and ‘tulle.’ Ten’s cold hands never left Mark’s face and Taeyong’s wrapped mercifully around his hands. Mark dizzily wondered what cold, cold fingers would feel like deep inside him, soothing the worst of the burn. Little by little, he fell asleep. 

He woke in the middle of the night to the feeling of gravity pulling at him. He grunted and stirred and realized he was sitting up and leaning on something delightfully cold. A straw jabbed at his lips dry and cracking lips. He opened his mouth and took it and sucked until air bubbled noisily through the tube. “More, I think,” a silky cold voice in his ear murmured. 

Mark’s throat burned, his mouth felt swollen, his eyes ached. “Oh yes,” Taemin breathed in his ear. “We understand a little about thirst.” 

The straw was back at his lips and he drank all of that too. 

“More?” Taemin said. Cold hands clutched him under the arms. A cold cheek pressed against his hair. 

“Yuh,” he answered. 

He drank the third cup more slowly, feeling a little less desperate. When cold fingers pressed pills into his hand, he opened his eyes to take them. Taeyong knelt on the bed in front of him. “You’ve been writhing in your sleep,” he said. 

“Yeah?” 

He realized there was a delicious cool feeling soothing the vicious burning of his lower stomach. He looked down and saw Ten’s hand lying on the skin there. “Thank god for you guys,” he said. 

“Oh no, not Him,” Taemin said. 

Mark chuckled. A frigid hand pet soothingly through his hair. “What time is it?”

“It is Monday now. Early, early Monday.”

“I’m gonna miss school.”

“Yes.”

Mark managed to open his eyes again. The coven crouched around him, all wholly unearthly in the dark where their shadows took on shape and menace beyond what the eye could catch. Red glinted in its own dim light. They caught the slightest moonlight through the window with a pale glow. If they decided he was prey, he’d have minutes to live and nothing he could do about it. 

Instead, they sat in the dark with him, going without blood to keep him comfortable. 

“I’m so glad I moved here,” Mark said, strangely emotional. 

“Ah. Are you? Hm.” 

Mark chuckled, knowing they didn’t feel the same way out of pure fear and feeling completely okay with that. He coaxed Taemin to lay him down in the bed and Taemin lay beside him, cool shoulder still pressed to Mark’s back. He slept comfortably until morning. 

The vampires vanished before sunrise, of course. Jongin and Lucas came in to eat breakfast with him and make sure he was doing alright. The burn remained, as did the absolute exhaustion, but he felt more lucid and functional. Lucas went to school cheerfully. 

“You should go to work,” Mark said to Jongin after Lucas had gone. 

Jongin looked up from his Nintendo switch with a pout. “I need to,” he said. His legs were thrown over Mark’s at the end of his bed, and though it didn’t feel nearly as nice as cold vampire limbs, he couldn’t bring himself to ask Jongin to move. “I figured I could get away with waiting another half hour, but I can’t stay here all day.”

“Everyone’s so nice,” Mark mumbled. “I’m really sorry to be such a problem.” 

“What you did was really dumb,” Jongin said. Mark looked up anxiously and saw that he was grinning. “Like super dumb. But like, really awesome. Your ex is something else, by the way.”

“So is his mom, right?” 

Jongin made an awkward little noise. “I promise that’s not something I get up to often.”

“She’s a sex demon,” Mark said. “Especially if you like, um…monsters. I don’t blame you. I’m so sorry about Hyuck.” 

“I got a sale,” Jongin said. He was going bright red again and fidgeting, not looking right at Mark. “I kind of had fun getting to meet him. I got to watch you toss him ruthlessly into hell. Net positive, I think.”

“He’s so embarrassing,” Mark said. “He’s always been so embarrassing.”

“Why the hell did you date him?” Jongin said. 

Mark had a lot of answers to that, how his childhood friend had started growing horns and hooves and cried desperately into Mark’s shirt in the school bathroom while they were both supposed to be in class. How he’d laid on Mark’s bed late one night with his eyes a solid black and said he realized he could read their teacher’s sexual interests in men instead of women, how he could read it on Mark too, how that was fine. How even with all his confidence, Hyuck still shook like a leaf the first time they kissed. “We were so close,” Mark said. Jongin nodded. The Switch lay inactive in his lap and he gazed at Mark. “We made much better friends than boyfriends.”

“That can happen.”

“Yeah. I guess I lost that friendship, but I’ve found better ones.” 

“Is he, like…an incubus? Since his mom’s a succubus?” 

“Nah, just a demon.” He looked up and saw Jongin looking almost disappointed. “What was fucking a succubus like?” 

“Hot and terrifying.”

“Right.” He remembered Ms. Lee standing in her kitchen in her yoga pants and sports bra, waving a spatula at Donghyuck and smoking the lit end of a cigarette. He could not imagine having sex with her. He also couldn’t imagine living up to that. “Yeah she was pretty intense,” he said. 

Before Jongin left for work, he gave Mark a kiss on the sweaty forehead. 

Baekhyun checked on Mark sometime mid-morning. “Wow, you look functional,” Baekhyun said. 

Mark looked up from the book he was reading. “I’m trying to distract myself.”

“I could sense from upstairs that you wanted some water,” Baekhyun said, and handed him a glass. “You don’t want food yet.” He narrowed his eyes and Mark waited for it, blush already creeping onto his cheeks. “You know what,” Baekhyun said. “I’m gonna leave you alone for two hours exactly. I’ll be back in at twelve.”

The minute he was out of the room, Mark dove under his bed for the lube and kicked his pants off. 

Sweaty butt is not a fun thing to finger. Mark hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab a towel, so he shoved his balled-up sweat pants under his ass and thrust into himself as quick as he dared.

He barely noticed the burn. It disappeared into the constant pain he’d been feeling for days. He let himself groan at it, wondered if it hadn’t faded a little since he was last sober. He found the mark quickly, pressed his fingers to it, and started a flow of magic through his shoulders. It moved sluggishly, like mud in a narrow channel. He panted harshly, trying to get something steady going with the thought of unblocking his magic a bit. His magic protested. The mark burned hotter. He whimpered and abated a little. 

Fingers stuff up his own ass, Mark blinked up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna burn these sheets,” he muttered, but the thought of burning made Donghyuck come to mind, not that he hadn’t been there already. Mark hissed in frustration and wiggled his fingers around for a minute to get to the mark. They swiped harshly across his prostate on the way there, which throbbed with sensitivity. He froze and let shivers tear through him for a moment. His dick hardened a fraction. Then he found the mark and started the magic channel again. 

Something unclogged unpleasantly. Nothing physical, thank goodness, just the jarring feeling of energy in his body rumbling to a start. He wiggled. His fingers brushed across his prostate again. 

“Is this what blocked chakra means?” he said to the room. He closed his eyes and focused and tried to move magic so hard he found himself actually trying to move across the bed on his shoulders. His ass burned. His fingers ached. Surges of energy rippled through him like water breaking out of a damn until it ran steadily. 

He did not have the energy to do anything about his semi. He dragged his pants back on and stumbled to the shower where he sat on the floor and leaned against the side of the tub. 

Yeri and Lydia arrived an inconvenient fifteen minutes into Mark’s nap. “Holy shit, you changed your sheets,” Yeri said. She flopped down on the mattress and touched his hair. “Are you _clean_?” 

“hmuyuh-huh.” 

Yeri made an indignant noise. “Look at that. He doesn’t need our help at all. We can go home now.”

“nooo,” Mark said and wrapped the skirt of her dress around his fist. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off a little. 

“…ark. Mark!”

“I’m here.”

Lydia was pulling up his desk chair. She spread her fluffy black skirts and settled onto the uncomfortable wooden thing like a model. “Here’s the villain,” she said. “What a demon slayer.”

“Just got to sleep,” he grumbled. 

“Would you really like us to leave then?” Yeri said. 

“No! I’m…ugh. I’m…”

“We’ll give you a minute.” 

Mark tried to sit up, felt the burn stab through his ass, and collapsed back into the pillow with a whimper. 

“Still hurts?” Yeri asked. Her fingers ran through his hair again. He hummed. “How did the vamps treat you last night?”

“Pretty good,” he mumbled. “And Baekhyun helped me put sheets back on my bed. Everyone’s so nice.”

“Everyone’s so scared of you right now,” Yeri said. 

“Our professor,” Lydia said, and Mark remembered she was there. He struggled to sit up. “Our professor is extremely worried about you.” Her eyes twinkled. “She’s surprised you’re still functioning and expects your chakras to be completely blocked.”

“I was right,” he said. “I was thinking that was it.” 

“I promised her I’d help you fix that, but I see you’ve already done so.”

“Really?” Yeri said. “I was so sure he’d need help. He’s shit at meditating.”

“Meditating?” Mark said. “You mean I could have just meditated to fix it?” 

“Uh yeah?” Yeri gave him a weird look. “What’d you do?” 

“He used the masculine method, I assume,” Lydia said. She really did look amused now. “Physical force.” 

Mark rubbed his cheeks and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. 

“Do I want to know what that means?” Yeri said. Mark shook his head, but remembered how Yeri had held him up in the shower the previous day and figured nothing was past them now. “Had to touch the mark and channel magic through it,” he mumbled. “Still hurts though.”

Yeri wrinkled her nose. “Is that why you changed your sheets?” 

“Ugh! No! I sweated all over them, that’s why. I—oh my god why do I tell you anything.” Mark threw an arm over his face with a long sigh through his nose. “If Hyuck comes back here,” he said, “I’m going to banish him a second time just as revenge for putting this in my ass of all places. Fucking impossible to reach.” 

“Least you’ll never have trouble finding your prostate,” Lydia muttered. 

“ohmygodcanwepleasestoptalkingaboutit.”

The girls snickered at him. Yeri reached into her bag and pulled out a whole sheaf of Biscoff cookies. The afternoon proceeded more pleasantly until the rest of Baekhyun’s tenants got home.

Lucas clearly had no idea what to do with the attention of a lovely woman his age, especially one like Lydia with a professional interest in werewolves who would not stop asking questions about his shifting and moon cycles. He scratched the back of his neck with big hands and laughed at his own poorly constructed sentences and flushed a deep red. 

“He knows he’s handsome too,” Yeri said. “She’s got him real flustered.”

“She’s pretty scary.”

Yeri rolled her eyes. “Maybe to you boys.” 

“You like her,” Mark said, poking her with a shoe. “Don’t lie.” 

“She’s okay,” Yeri grumbled.

“Cup of tea?” Jongin asked. “Maybe more Aleve?”

Mark looked up from the class notes Yeri had left behind. Jongin stood in his doorway with his pecs filling out an old t-shirt, face still damp from his bedtime routine. “Just Aleve, I think.” 

“Still hurts?” Jongin asked. 

“Yeah, a bit. It’s definitely going away, but I’m super worried about performing the ritual on Friday. Like, what if I just get tired and keel over in the dirt and sleep in the woods. I’d, like, get a bad grade.”

Jongin’s weight leaned suddenly onto Mark’s side. 

“Whoa there,” Mark said, trying to hold him up. Jongin’s muscular weight crushed down on top of him until Mark gave in a lay down, and then Jongin crawled over his body and bit his ear like a bear toying with his food. Mark let out an alarmed little squeak, feeling rather hot in some unexpected places. 

“You’re gonna be fine,” Jongin said. 

“Wh-where is this coming fro—ugh. Mm.” 

Jongin’s lips pressed so tightly against his. Mark wiggled his arms, both trapped between their chests, until he could get his elbows out to wrap around Jongin’s shoulders. He became suddenly poignantly aware of how in his bed they were, and how alone they were. Lucas and Baekhyun had long left the room. Jongin’s plush lips squished against his. His hot tongue ran over Mark’s. Mark tried to shuffle his hips into a better position and broke the kiss on a pained gasp. 

“You’re not fine,” Jongin said. He sat up. 

“Nooo,” Mark whined. “Come back. You were such a good blanket.” 

Jongin lay cautiously back down, half on top of him. His lips were still within kissing distance if Mark stretched his neck a little, but now he felt shy. “It’s been scary, seeing you sick,” Jongin said. 

“I thought you liked scary,” Mark said. Jongin’s hand wrapped all the way around Mark’s waist, thumb stroking distractingly at his stomach. Looking at Jongin’s face was more of a workout for Mark’s heart than he felt prepared for, so he shut his eyes. He soaked in Jongin’s warmth so completely it was almost like meditating. 

“Different kind of scary, I guess,” Jongin said. 

“Uhhh what were we talking about?” 

Instead of answering, Jongin gave him a kiss and a laugh and Mark decided he didn’t care so much about the conversation. 

It wasn’t long after that that the vampires came creeping to the door of Mark’s room, peering past the doorframe. “Why hello, Mark and Jongin, darlings,” Taemin said. 

“Is it your turn now?” Jongin said. “That means its bedtime for me.”

“Ah, bedtime,” Taemin said. “When the sun goes down. Right.” He smiled his uncomfortably mirthless smile. 

“You can come in,” Mark said. 

“Oh, I know,” Taemin said. “Are we…interrupting?” 

Mark looked at the complete lack of distance between his body and Jongin’s, at the way Jongin had pushed his shirt a few inches up his tummy. “I mean, not really. We’ve been like this a while.” 

“Strange,” Taemin breathed like Jongin couldn’t hear, and then said more loudly, “It is nice, I suppose, sharing warmth.” 

“Don’t you ever do that?” Jongin said. “Snuggle to share warmth?”

Taemin checked with his sidekicks quickly, but Taeyong was giving Ten a look that said _’see’_ and Ten was giving a Jongin a look that said _‘you’re suspicious as hell,’_ so Taemin managed only, “Aha, um, all the time. Yeah.” 

Jongin shuffled up and took his warmth away, but pulled Mark’s blankets up over his shoulders before he left. It was so mom-like that Mark wanted to cry a little. What a way for the first week of dating to go. Kisses or not, Jongin would be treating him like a son forever at this rate. 

Triple T stalled him at the door, unwilling to move out of the way for him. Mark thought he saw a pale hand wrap around Jongin’s waist and struggled to sit up. By the time he was upright, Jongin stood frozen halfway through the door. That was definitely Taemin’s hand on his chest. Taeyong and Ten stared intently at his neck with their fangs showing just under their lips. 

“Hey guys,” Mark snapped. Jongin slipped away. 

“Yes?” Taemin said. 

“Um…you’re being totally creepy.”

“Oh, were we?” Taemin said. “I never notice anymore.” The vampires were back in their opulent lounge wear, fur-lined robes and silk pajamas and headbands with little cat ears like they were planning on spa night as well. “I brought nail polish,” Taemin said. Mark leaned forward to see.

Taemin’s nail polish collection filled an entire five-gallon tub and included brands and bottles that Mark had never seen and definitely hadn’t been in production in decades, though those made up the bottom layer and most looked completely solid in their glass containers. Most of them were varying shades between red and black with some flesh tones and pale pinks thrown in, and then a few wild cards like electric blue and pure sparkles. 

“Rouge noir,” Taemin said, pulling it from the top. 

“Am I invited?” Mark said. “This looks fun.”

“Of course, darling. Any color but this Chanel, which is my signature.”

“You know it’s one of the most popular nail polish colors in the world, right?” Ten said. 

“Shh,” Taemin said as he amorously unscrewed the bottle and drew the dripping color from its container. 

“Worn by Uma Thurman in _Pulp Fiction_,” Taeyong told Mark, “which he’s never watched, and by Madonna at some point, who he used to be a big fan of. Sometimes known as ‘vamp,’ and said to be the color of dried blood.” He picked a much more traditional red out of the box. Ten seemed to be going for a French manicure. 

“Uhh I guess I’ll do black?” Mark said. 

Ten ended up doing it for him, his cold and now familiar hands cupping Mark’s warm ones. “Hold still,” he said for the third time since they started. Mark stopped scratching his arm and stayed as still as a lump on a log. Ten ran a hand soothingly over his knee. “Better,” he said. 

“How did you ensnare him?” Taemin said suddenly. “Dear Jongin, I mean.”

“Ensnare?” Mark said. “I don’t know about ensnaring anyone. I thought he was cute and he thought I was cute and that was just luck, I guess.”

“Cute,” Taemin said. “He likes cute.”

A defensive heat rose in his chest. “You’re not going after the guy I just went on a date with, Taemin. That’s just rude.”

“If you’re not going to make use of his blood he’s still up for grabs in my book.”

“You know, I don’t think he’d want to offer,” Mark lied. 

“Even now, I can smell him,” Taemin breathed. “My mouth waters. So singular a scent.” 

“Don’t drip on the rug,” Taeyong said. 

“Oh shit,” Taemin quickly jammed his brush back in the bottle. “Can’t waste a drop of this, now can we? It’s way too expensive.” 

It was facemasks next. 

“Do you guys even need these?” Mark said. “I thought your bodies didn’t, like, change. Can you even get dry skin or acne or any of that?”

“Is that what these are for?” Taeyong said, holding the mask pack up delicately. “I thought they were for, like feeling good. Like a massage.”

“Those can technically be medical too, you know.” 

Taeyong shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to try, does it?” And with that they all turned into spa ghosts with forcibly straight faces and the gentle scent of tea tree oil coming off them. Mark had to pull out his phone and avoid looking at the vampires with their hair up in their kitty headbands and their features ringed in mask-like clown makeup. Every time he caught sight of Taemin, he cracked a grin that disturbed his own clammy mask. 

He must have fallen asleep, because he woke with the mask off and his phone just out of his hand on the mattress. His nails finally felt dry. The vampires all lounged around in their drapey black clothes, Ten snuggled in Taemin’s arms with his back to Taemin’s chest, Taeyong’s head pillowed on their legs, all of them on their phones. “You know you guys can go to the club, right?” Mark said. “I’m almost better.”

“What kind of caretakers would we be if we let you suffer on your own,” Taemin said with a voice so dry and soft it could have been the whisper of air through the vents. Mark couldn’t help his shiver. “I can smell him on your bed,” Taemin said. 

“Super creepy, man.”

“I’m an undead terror of the night, Mark. I think creepy is the best you can hope for.” 

“Maybe just don’t say that kind of stuff out loud?” Mark said. “It’s pretty weird for me since I’m like, kind of dating him.”

“What is he to you, Mark?” Taemin said. “He will not sleep in your bed. He will not call you his beau.”

“Boyfriend,” Ten corrected. 

“Such an inferior word.” 

“We just…haven’t gotten there yet.”

“It has only been two weeks,” Taeyong said.

“His scent drives me to distraction.”

“Sire,” Ten said. “You’re distressing our patient.” 

Taemin threw his head back and body-rolled with admirable drama, nearly throwing his two sidekicks off him. “I must have him,” he said. 

The vision of Taemin ‘having’ Jongin got Mark as uncomfortably hot under the collar as it made him anxious. “Well, he’s mine,” he said, “functionally. For now. So hands off. Teeth off. Whatever.” 

“I don’t want to ‘date’ him,” Taemin scoffed. “You can keep him for that.” In the light of Ten’s phone, he looked particularly ghostly, light reflecting flatly off his face. His eyes glowed a little red, low under his lids. He mumbled indistinctly for a little while, leaving only words like ‘succulent flesh,’ and ‘collarbones of a god’ audible. Mark squirmed.

“He’s been like this for months,” Ten said, not looking up from his phone. “It gets worse when he’s thirsty.” 

“That’s not reassuring,” Mark said. “Please just go eat. Or, um, drink.” 

“We’d have to go get ready,” Taeyong said. He wrinkled his nose. “And it’s already three a.m. Not worth it.”

“Whoa, what? I slept for way longer than I thought.” He struggled into a better position and realized the general ache of his limbs and the burn in his ass had nearly gone away. “Ugh. I’ll have to go to class tomorrow,” he groaned. “And I’m never gonna get back to sleep now.”

“Should I hypnotize you?” Taemin said. Ten and Taeyong both slunk off his body.

“Huh?”

Before Mark could blink, Taemin kneeled over him, freezing fingers on his cheeks, weight settled on his stomach, red eyes glowing in the dark inches away. Mark jumped, gasped, and found himself frozen on his sheets, eyes glued to the red circles floating in the dark above him, the way they seemed to glimmer, spin, grow in his mind till all he saw was red. 

“Sleep,” Taemin said. 

Mark woke up to his alarm with a frantic jolt. Sun streamed through the window. He could almost feel Taemin still kneeling on his hips, his long fingers clutching his cheeks. He sat bolt upright and felt his body belatedly flood with adrenaline. “Whoa, fuck,” he said out loud.

Jongin didn’t answer the door when he knocked. He checked his phone. Already nine a.m. Jongin would already be long gone. Baekhyun’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

Lucas had already left too, but a plate of eggs and toast sat on the counter under a paper towel with a little smiley face drawn on it. He ate in a disoriented haze and stumbled back upstairs to do his morning stretches for the first time in days. He got distracted halfway through staring at his painted nails. Black. Perfect for Halloween. 

He went so far as to stand anxiously in front of the vampire’s door, not daring to open it with the sun burning brightly in the sky but anxious to feel like the world was real again. 

So when Yeri left her apartment to head to class, she found Mark standing there on the sidewalk with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. 

“You look,” she said. “Like a model art hoe.” 

“I put in an effort his morning,” he said, looking down at his boots, his most stylish black pants, his expensive and super soft dark gray v-neck, the dramatic black scarf. He’d layered up against the chill and slapped on a beanie. “I feel like I’ve missed a few days and I need to not be a bum. Can I hug you?” 

She wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Why?” 

“Ah, sorry. I just…Taemin like…put me to sleep last night. Like by vampire hypnosis or something. God. I feel like I’m either still dreaming or I’m in a pocket dimension or something where nothing is real.” 

“You know the real Yeri doesn’t hug on command, right?” she said. 

“What if I, like, begged you?”

“Try.” 

Mark looked around to see if anyone was watching. He didn’t see anyone. “Yeri, please, I’m so freaked out and kind of desperate and I need a hug so bad. You’re beautiful and perfect—” 

“Getting better,” she said. “Some kneeling would go a long way.”

“Fuck, it’s cold out and I don’t want to get my jeans dirty.”

“No hug.”

He got carefully down on his knees, bending awkwardly in his tight jeans. “You’re all I’ve got, Yeri. Please, please, please give me a hug. Just this one time. I promise I won’t bother you agai—”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mark,” she said. “It’s dangerous. You’re a witch, you should know this.”

“Fuck it, I’ll just ask Lydia,” he said. 

Yeri swooped down, wrapped her arms around his waist, and hefted him to his feet. She squeezed tight and pressed her cheek to his chest in the warmest, softest hug she’d ever given him. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she mumbled. 

Mark itched to tease her, but the lump in his throat was back and he didn’t dare give her any reason to never hug him again, so he clung tight and felt the world settle a bit. 

On the walk to school, they talked about Jongin. “Sounds like things are going well,” Yeri said. 

“He’s like…cuter than I thought. And I still feel so embarrassed around him. It’s bad. And I’m super concerned about him giving in to the vampires. Like.” He paused at a crosswalk. They could have absolutely crossed, but he wasn’t paying attention so he just stopped. “Like what if he does join their…I don’t know, herd? I think he called it a herd? Like, what if I’m not scary enough to keep his attention. The vampires are all over him and he’s, like, into it.”

“I’d pay to see that,” she muttered. 

“What?”

“’s hot. Hot people getting bit by vampires?” She nodded. “Totally sexy.”

Mark imagined it for a moment, Jongin lying limply in Taemin’s embrace like a gothic painting, throat bared, lots of red spread around. He felt his cheeks warm up a little. “Yeah but. They could hurt him, you know? That can’t be good for him.”

“He knows it’s no worse than giving blood, right?”

“It isn’t? Huh. I still don’t like it.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m not…jealous.”

“You’re totally jealous, Mark.” 

Classes went by at a crawl. More Seeing. A cup of tea. Potion making. Lydia sat at her own little table as usual, brew bubbling happily in her little cauldron over a ring of flame. Yeri stirred with her quartz wand and made soft frustrated noises at the back of her throat. Mark’s magic felt a little like it was still clogged at the source, but things still moved more easily now with his new technique than he was used to. 

The other students in the class had begun to pick up on the fact that he was actually doing magic now, and not just struggling and occasionally making magic happen on accident. The two girls a table over in their perfect little black dresses and pointy hats scowled at his fairly decent potion and whispered to each other. The one who always looked like she hadn’t slept and had leaves in her hair nodded appreciatively as she passed. 

His teacher pulled him aside after class again. “Glad to see you’re doing well. I heard about your incident.” 

“Yeah, sorry. I, um. Read the class notes and, uh, m-meditated to…unblock my…chakras…so they’re doing better.”

“Very good,” she said. “That’s so good to hear. Wow you’ve come a long, long way in a week.” 

“Uh, thanks.” 

“About your ritual on All Hallows,” she said.

“I’ve been worried about it.” 

She steepled her fingers and shoved her tongue in her cheek, thinking hard. “Yes, I think you’d better still try,” she said. “Preferably right after midnight on the morning of the first when the magic is easiest to harness. It is a huge portion of your grade. So even if your magic isn’t fully under your control, you’d better try.” 

“I think I still have a better chance than I used to,” he said. 

“Yes…I really was expecting you to fail last year.” 

“Yeah me too.” 

“I will—while grading your report—take into account your recent…accident. Since a banishment smell is nothing to sniff at, I think I can grant you some leniency. You’ve had, um, quite a learning experience.”

“Whoa, seriously? Thank you! Wow!” 

“Do try your best though.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m pretty excited about it.”

“Rest up until then, will you?” she said. “We only have the one class tomorrow, and then it’s Halloween. Forget homework this week and just take it easy. You can make it up afterwards. I’m…rather worried.”

“Oh. Uh…” He decided not to tell her about all their Halloween plans. “Yeah got it. Lots of rest. Cool.” 

Yeri waited for him out front. “How you feelin’?” she said and poked him in the stomach. As he was not graced with any protective squish, it really hurt. 

“Are you wearing fake nails?” he squeaked. 

“Yeah, but show me yours. I noticed you had black on them like a two-thousands emo kid. Gimme.” She took his hand and inspected. “These are done really well.”

“Ten did them. We had a whole spa night last night. They made me do a face mask too.”

She snorted. “Why on earth would vampires need face masks?” 

“I asked them that too.”

She walked him home. It wasn’t till they were halfway through the neighborhood and every step hurt like his life force was draining into the cement that it occurred to him that she might be worried. 

“You know I’m fine, right?” he said. 

“Mark, you look green.” 

He patted his cheeks, trying to feel their color. “I don’t feel green,” he said. 

“What do you feel?” 

“I don’t know, gray? Like a beige mush color?” 

“That’s not good either.”

“I need to sit down.” And so he did, right down on the sidewalk in the middle of the pleasant neighborhood. A group of students coming home from school passed them on the opposite side of the street, all staring. 

“You really don’t seem okay,” Yeri said. 

“I’m so tired.” 

“This morning you were worried about getting your pants dirty.”

Mark lay down fully on the sidewalk, head pillowed in the grass of a neighbor’s yard. “Feel like rubber,” he groaned. Yeri shuffled around wringing her hands and looking rather lost. 

A deep, soft, lovely voice said, “Is he okay?” 

“I’m okay,” Mark said, and stood so fast the world spun. He tipped right into Yeri, who barely kept him up before stronger arms pulled him back into a broader chest. His knees shook under himself. “I’m okay,” He said weakly, burying his face in his hands. 

“You’re only five blocks from home,” Jongin said in his ear. 

Mark could barely open his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he murmured.

“I think he just ran himself out of energy,” Yeri said. “We need to get him fed and into bed.”

“On my back, let’s go,” Jongin said, and crouched. Mark climbed sleepily on. 

Bits and pieces made it into his awareness, the gentle rhythm of Jongin’s walk, Yeri chatting next to them, the feeling of being set down on a bench as Jongin rested, the feeling of being lifted again. At some point he opened his eyes and saw his drifts of magic fog swirling around Jongin and Yeri’s feet, and then heard the clunk of Yeri’s boots on the wooden porch. The door creaked open. Warmth flooded around him. He was set down on the living room couch.

The next time he woke, Lucas kneeled in front of him, shaking him gently. “Soup,” he said. “It’s my first time making this so I hope it’s good.” 

“I went through your ingredients,” Yeri said. She sat in the chair opposite him, stockinged feet pulled under her. “Hope you don’t mind. It’s just some rest aids in the tea and recovery stuff in the soup.”

“Thanks,” he said. He shook his head. He already felt more awake and aware. His feet rested against Jongin’s toasty warm thighs. “I don’t know what happened. That came on so suddenly.”

“It wasn’t abnormal, actually,” she said. “You’re exhausted from being sick. You overexerted yourself by going to school and walking so far. It didn’t help that you didn’t sleep naturally for much of the night last night. I think that was a medically predictable outcome.”

“Wait, you didn’t—what happened last night?” Jongin said. 

“Oh,” Mark said. “Um. Taemin…hypnotized me to sleep, I guess. Which was actually a decent idea in the moment but like, didn’t end up helping.” 

“What the fuck? He can hypnotize people?” 

“Oh, uh…yeah.” 

Jongin’s eyes bugged. “Whoa,” he murmured. 

“It’s not that great,” Mark said quickly. “I kind of just blacked out. Um, Lucas, this soup is fucking amazing. Holy crap. Jeezus fuck.” He shoveled it more down his throat. It was so hot his eyes teared up and his nose started running. 

“You like it that much?” Lucas said, beaming. “Wow. Don’t cry.” Lucas looked so excited that Mark didn’t even bother telling him he wasn’t crying. He just raised the spoon in salute and took another giant, burning mouthful. 

“I suppose you don’t want to play games after dinner,” Jongin said. 

“What? I’d love to play games after—”

Yeri interrupted. “Mark, shut up. You’re going to bed.” 

“It’s like five p.m.”

“And you’re going to bed. You still have a lot of recovery to do before Thursday.”

Games in Jongin’s room sounded like exactly the kind of thing that would help his rest and relaxation, even though Jongin got his heart doing strange and erratic things. He pouted and looked to Jongin for support. 

“Mark, I think you should go to bed.” 

Mark ate his soup sadly, wondering why it still felt too forward to ask Jongin to come sleep with him. 

Partway through his second serving of soup, he fell asleep sitting up and nearly dropped it on the floor. Lucas caught it. Yeri walked him upstairs and helped him get ready for bed. Before he dropped off, heavy and aching with tiredness, Jongin’s face appeared in his vision. A warm hand pet his cheek. “I’ll be here with you until the vampires wake up,” he murmured. 

“Hnn,” Mark said, and fell asleep.

He didn’t bother going to class the next day. Lucas left him breakfast again and he sat at the kitchen table with his eggs and rather burned hash browns so long that he missed his window to prepare for class. The clock snuck towards the class’s official start time and he stared at it and felt strangely peaceful, even though he frequently had nightmares about the exact scenario of not getting to class. 

He’d woken up thinking about Donghyuck, about the look on his face when Mark asked why he put the pact mark in his ass, the way he’d looked almost longing. _It’s my favorite part of you._ Fucking jerk. Best friends for ten years, boyfriends for two. Favorite part. 

But his face of shock when Mark pulled out the banishment spell stuck harder in his head, the way he’d been so surprised, how he couldn’t do anything about it. Magic had burst from Mark’s palm and done exactly what it was supposed to. 

Mark’s entire self felt burned out, like the hellfire had consumed the detritus in his body and soul and left it clear for a forest of new growth. 

He wondered if Donghyuck felt the same way.

Baekhyun stepped through the front door whistling like an especially captivating songbird and dropped an armload of boxes of full-sized chocolate bars on the table. “Here’s the lure,” he said, and wandered off, still whistling.

Mark took a cup of tea upstairs and got in about a half hour of planning his ritual before his body decided he needed a nap.

Mark woke to Lucas kneeling next to his bed with his big smile. “It’s like you have mono,” he said. “I got mono once.” He giggled like that was a scandalous secret. “I kept stealing my friend’s drink at lunch and it turns out he was sick.” Mark blinked slowly and started searching for his phone. “Sick or not,” Lucas said, “you can’t sleep any more. Sorry bud. You’ve got dinner and then you’ve got rehearsal.” 

Mark sat up, disoriented. “Rehearsal?” 

Rehearsal began an hour after dark. The vampires in full costume, which all looked like they were supposed to fit Taemin. Taeyong’s ruffled black shirt was a little wide on his shoulders and Ten’s tight black pants were a little long on his ankles. They all looked a little like nineteenth century dandies having a rebellious phase. 

Their eyes gleamed bright red. “How do you like our, um, contact lenses?” Taemin asked Jongin. 

“Brilliant. Very high quality,” Jongin said. 

“Why thank you, darling,” Taemin hissed, delighted. Mark scowled at him. Ten and Taeyong watched Jongin from behind his back, whispering to each other. “They are…perfectly comfortable.” 

“I imagine so,” Jongin said easily. Taeyong made a furious little gesture and Ten nodded. 

They were out on the porch in the cold. Yeri had shown up on Baekhyun’s request, who was sitting on the railing holding a clipboard with an empty sheet of paper. “So…” he said, worrying his lower lip. “The vampires will—uh, fake vampires will be stationed down the porch in costume where they’re mostly in shade under the tree. We’ve set up a loveseat and some, um, bloody sheets, supplied by the vamp—fake vampires. With fake blood.” 

Yeri leaned in close to Mark’s ear and whispered, “are we really still faking this shit?” 

“Yeah, so Triple T still doesn’t know—or isn’t sure if Jongin knows or not. We’re keeping it that way.”

“What?” Yeri said. “Wouldn’t Jongin be okay with them knowing?”

“Sh.”

“You’ve got a…you said pageant?” 

“Skit,” Ten said loudly. “Skit, not pageant.”

“Pageant is the correct terminology,” Taemin said. 

“Sire, it really isn’t anymore,” Ten said. 

“Okay, ‘skit,’” Taemin said. “Sounds stupid.” 

“The vampires. FAKE vampires. Jeez, sorry guys. The fake vampires are going to be doing their skit down there on the furniture just in view of trick-or-treaters, mostly for ambience and mystery. Nothing too obtrusive, okay guys? You’re actually not the stars of the show. We just need you to be unnerving.”

“Unnerving,” Taemin said. “We can do unnerving.” 

“Yes, I know. Lucas will be in his wolf mask that he totally owns. He’ll be jumping out and scaring people all over the place. Lucas, do you have a route planned?” 

Lucas slipped his phone back into his pocket and stood up straight. “Sorry, what?”

“Do you, jump scare man, have a route planned?”

“Oh! Yeah, uh, I thought I’d stay close to the front of the house most of the time. Like…there’s the tree, right? I can jump out from behind the tree at people on the sidewalk. Still keeps me mostly in shadow. Then I can run through the side yard, which is totally dark, and come around the other side of the house to get people coming off the porch since there aren’t any spotlights over there. I totally sabotaged the neighbor’s motion sensing light yesterday.” 

Mark made a startled noise that no one heard. 

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “And then when I’m around back of the house I can kind of check the woods.”

“If anyone comes in from behind,” Baekhyun said with soft threat, “I will let you know.” 

The whole group shifted uncomfortably as Baekhyun stared at his empty clip board, eyes bugging out of his skull. 

Taemin cleared his throat. Baekhyun blinked and shook himself and grabbed the pencil from behind his ear. He made a single mark on his paper. “Okay, Jongin?” 

“I was mostly planning to wander around the graveyard really slowly in costume with my hood over my face and then lunge at people when they least expect it.”

“Sounds awesome,” Baekhyun said. “Maybe if we actually do get kids sneaking around the back way you can haunt the graveyard back there too.”

“Absolutely.”

“Genius, darling,” Taemin said. He leaned close with an approving smile and wrapped a long hand around his thick upper arm. Mark squirmed.

“Cool,” Baekhyun said obliviously. He made another random line on his clipboard. Mark suspected he only had it to give himself a look of authority. “Witches. Uh. Fake witches.” 

Taemin nodded with satisfaction. Taeyong and Ten frowned. 

“Fake witches, you’re just sitting on the porch with a cauldron full of candy, right? Just, like, do you say hi to the people that come up here?” 

“Yeah,” Mark said. “The kids say trick or treat and then we, I don’t know, cackle a little or say cryptic shit? Do we play it completely straight?” 

“We, um, act like we are totally real modern witches, I guess,” Yeri said. “As if we weren’t fake at all.” A smirk threatened to crack over her face. “You’ve had a lot of practice, right?”

“Ow,” he said. 

She shouldered him and snickered. 

Taemin was still standing right by Jongin’s arm, head tilted towards him just a little as he took deep, deliberate breaths through his nose. 

“I’ll be dressed in all black like a stage hand keeping everything in order,” Baekhyun said. “Now. I think we’d all look pretty fucking stupid if we ran a full rehearsal with no children around, but there is something I really want to see. Taemin and co. will you please show us your skit?”

Taemin’s head snapped away from Jongin’s shoulder. “What? Now?” 

“Yuh-huh.”

Taemin looked behind himself at Ten and Taeyong, all of them shrouded in their cloaks like cultists. “We’re not prepared,” he said. 

“This is a rehearsal. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

The vampires gathered in a small group and hissed amongst themselves. “It’s just that we don’t have our victi—I mean our volunteer yet.” 

Baekhyun dropped the clipboard threateningly into his lap. “What do you mean, ‘volunteer.’”

“Johnny,” Taemin said. He looked to his silent sidekicks for support. “Jongin and Mark have met him. We couldn’t decide on who was supposed to just lie there and be a body, so we got a friend instead. I hope that’s alright.” 

“Oh yeah, Johnny,” Jongin said. “I like Johnny. I approve of this plan.” 

Baekhyun’s eyes narrowed threateningly. “This is not the time for unexpected changes,” he said. “Why haven’t you brought this to me before?” 

“We could demonstrate for you,” Taemin said, “if we had…a volunteer to stand in? For Johnny?” At this, he turned slowly and smiled sweetly at Jongin. “Jongin? Would you care to, uh, step into Johnny’s role for a few—”

“I’ll do it,” Mark said. 

The vampires’ heads all snapped to him. 

“I did theater in high school,” Mark said, “so I can do it.”

Jongin looked infuriatingly disappointed. Mark stomped forward towards the couch. Taemin still wore his pleasant smile, but his eyes bugged like a mask of fury. “Of course,” he said. 

“No real biting, okay? Haha,” Baekhyun said. 

“Right,” Taemin said, guiding Mark to the couch with his fingernails the color of dried blood digging into what little extra flesh there was on his arm. “And remember this is all happening in the dark. Mark, you will by lying, ah, here.” He shoved Mark down on the loveseat, lying back against the cushions with his legs up and his head thrown over the arm. They’d already wrapped it with a cushion, which was very nice, except now his neck was all bare and stretched out. 

“There will be, ah, fake…blood on the side of his neck, just here,” two fingernails jabbed into his neck just above his collarbone. “Johnny will lie mostly still, maybe occasionally groaning a little, wearing a light-colored shirt to make him just slightly visible. Also bloodstained.”

Mark made an exaggerated pained groan much like the ones he’d been lying in bed making for days. 

“Rather like that, yes,” Taemin said. 

Mark looked up to see Jongin and Yeri standing shoulder to shoulder and leaning in like they were whispering. Baekhyun was crunched over his clipboard, eyes beginning to glow slightly pink in fascination. Then Taemin jammed a finger against his forehead and forced his head back. “If you’re going to participate,” he hissed, “play the part.”

“Ow.” 

“Not ‘ow,’ groaning. You must groan, Mark.”

“Eurrghghmmm.”

“Very good. There will be three positions,” Taemin said. “Which we will switch in and out of. The guard—” he motioned to Taeyong, who paced slowly back and forth at the end of their setup, watching the better-lit part of the porch over his collar. It partially shielded the action on the loveseat from view and was just a generally unnerving black shadow. “Then there’s the watcher.”

At this, Ten appeared suddenly over the back of the loveseat, leaning like a gargoyle over them. “And the biter,” Taemin said. He caged Mark in much like he had a couple nights ago to hypnotize him, and went right for his throat. Mark tensed up. Cold teeth brushed against his skin. 

“Do not get between a vampire and his prey, Mark,” Taemin breathed, so softly that Mark could barely hear him over the leaves shuffling in the yard. 

“He’s not prey,” Mark whispered back, “he’s your housemate, and I’m trying to date him. Back off.” 

“So it will be like this, shall it?” Taemin whispered, so softly. His mouth was right below Mark’s ear now, cold lips brushing skin, and for the first time it really settled in Mark’s mind that it was an undead thing that held him. “To get to him I must go through you.” 

“I’m just telling you to give it up.”

A freezing hand curled around the back of his neck. Ten hovered over, his shadow taking on that graveyard creep that was somehow more terrifying than a normal shadow. Taeyong’s light steps tread a steady rhythm on the creaking porch. “It is not so easy,” Taemin whispered. A wicked shudder worked its way through Mark’s body. “How gloriously alive you are. But you have challenged my goals. I take this very seriously.”

“Don’t make me banish you too.” 

Taemin’s hands tightened on him, an exasperated sigh flowing frigidly over Mark’s face. “It would not hurt him.”

“It’s his choice.”

“Ah,” Taemin shuffled, agitated. “That’s my loophole then.” 

“What’s all that whispering?” Baekhyun said. “There’s not actually whispering in the skit, is there?” 

“What whispering?” Taemin snapped.

“You can’t let him know about you,” Mark breathed. “Baekhyun’s rule.”

“But does he not know?” Taemin whispered. “Taeyong has told me things that I did not believe, that he might know, and you might keep it from us.” An actual tongue, cold and damp and frightening, licked against the skin of Mark’s neck.

Further down the porch, Baekhyun said, “We don’t need a full demonstration. It’s very good. You can do the full skit tomorrow. Unless something else is supposed to happen?”

“Time will tell,” Taemin said, ignoring them and snuggling chillingly into Mark’s chest. Mark realized he was gripping the couch so hard his fingers hurt. “But if I find you have kept this from me, oh Mark. There is nothing you will be able to do. I really think he would like it, Mark, and so this is not your place do decide.” 

He pulled away. “And then we’d all three cycle through those roles for the evening.” 

Yeri and Jongin looked intensely interested. “I love it,” Baekhyun said. 

“If anyone comes down the porch,” Taemin said, and then motioned for someone to come down the porch. Jongin came this time, readily forward towards Mark. “We will all stop them.” All three vampires rushed to meet Jongin like fluid darkness. Jongin froze, startled. Taemin got right against Jongin’s chest. “You look overwhelmed, darling,” he said. “Do relax. What have you to worry about?”

“Uh…”

“Very effective,” Baekhyun said. “This is awesome. Great job guys. Can’t wait to meet your body tomorrow. Johnny, was it? Is that the guy that I see sneaking out in the morning sometimes?”

Mark peeled himself up off the loveseat and wiped the vampire spit off his neck. 

The vampires slowly withdrew, though Mark definitely saw Taemin’s hand drag a little down Jongin’s chest. 

Within ten minutes, Jongin and Yeri were sitting on Mark’s bed looking kind of uncomfortable as Mark furiously sketched out an undead warding sigil. “And a spell of holding,” He said through gritted teeth. “fucking asshole.”

“Bro, aren’t you supposed to be, like, taking it easy?” Yeri said. “You’re still recovering. You’ve got a huge ritual coming up in roughly twenty-four hours.”

“What’s the big deal?” Jongin said.

“He’s, um, challenging my…power, I think,” Mark said, because he didn’t want Jongin getting any ideas about all the scary magical sucking Taemin would like to be giving him. “Like establishing magical dominance. Maybe. Creepy old prick.”

“Hey hey,” Jongin said. “For an undead monster, he’s pretty nice.”

Baekhyun appeared suddenly in the doorway. A glittering teal mist wrapped around him and his eyes glowed. “I think there are people in the woods,” he said. 

Mark looked up from his spell. Jongin and Yeri shuffled on the bed. Baekhyun leaned against the windowsill and his hair lifted a moment like he was underwater with the current flowing past him. It settled back. “Yes, there are people out back, coming closer. They want answers.” 

“It’s not Halloween,” Mark said. “Can’t scare them away yet.”

Baekhyun turned slowly. His eyes gleamed a translucent, mermaid pink. A resonant hum filled the room. “Four of them,” he said. “Young.” 

“Those kids,” Jongin said. 

Mark got his crystal ball out of his desk and set it on the bed where they could all see it. What he wanted was simple enough: a view of the present and very nearby. It didn’t take much concentration before the ball turned deeply dark with the shade of trees in the night. Baekhyun flipped the light off so they could see, and the sporadic illumination of flashlights showed them the nighttime scene.

It wasn’t the kids. Four teenagers hiked through the brush, still young-looking like maybe they were in early high school, two boys and two girls, all in thin jackets, sneaking along with tiny flashlights. 

“Whoa,” Mark said. “Lucas didn’t put anything around the high school, did he?” 

“What? What about high school?” 

Mark reached out and grabbed Jongin’s hand, then Baekhyun’s. They both grabbed Yeri’s to complete the circle. The image only sputtered a little when Jongin wound his fingers in Mark’s. 

In the woods, the teenagers came across the burnt circle on the ground. They didn’t notice it for a minute, then someone picked up a burned line in the circle of their flashlight and started following the intentional curve across the ground. All flashlights moved to the ground. Every curve of the burnt circle was discovered.

“It’s kind of like watching a horror movie,” Jongin murmured as the flashlights started waving around frantically in every direction. 

Mark, who was remembering the way Lucas panicked and sprayed hose water all over the clearing when the flames roared up, was struggling not to laugh. 

“Does anybody know if Lucas is out there right now?” Baekhyun said.

A second later, all flashlights turned deeper into the woods, and then as one, all four teenagers, flashlights in hand, turned and sprinted right towards the house. “He’s totally out there right now!” Mark cackled. 

The teenagers hovered at the edge of the forest, flashlights off, and now Mark could see their movement though his window, right at the edge of the tree line as they hovered there not wanted to run out into the backyard and not wanted to stay in the woods. All of a sudden, someone let out a tiny shriek and the whole group lurched to the side. A flashlight flicked on and lit up the burnt wicker man at the edge of the backyard. They started shuffling at top speed along the edge of the backyard. Mark watched them sneak through the houses until they were under the neighborhood streetlights rushing towards home. He let up on his concentration, though he didn’t let go of Jongin’s hand. 

Lucas loped through the backyard on his long legs, tugging a shirt on over his head. He arrived in the top room beaming from ear to ear. “Guys, you’ll never believe what I just—”

“We were watching!” Mark said. “We saw it in the crystal! They saw you and took off like ‘AAAHH’ all the way into the backyard! It was awesome, man.”

Lucas seemed to like that even better than telling the story himself. He bounced up and down on the spot and giggled. “You should have heard them,” he said. “They were like ‘oh my god, oh my god, I think there’s something back there.’ And then they were like ‘oh fuck, run!’ And one of them was like ‘I can’t die! I haven’t smoked weed yet!’ And they wouldn’t go into the backyard.”

Baekhyun didn’t seem to find any of this very funny. He frowned out the back window. Mark suspected uncomfortably that he hadn’t wanted to let the teenagers go, but Jongin looked very proud. Their tricks had worked, which meant Halloween was likely to be chaotic and eventful.

“I’m going to go keep prowling,” Lucas said. “It’s great weather for running.” 

“And I’m going to bed,” Baekhyun said. “We have a big day tomorrow.”


	4. Mark Lee the Vampire Slayer

It was a crisp, perfect Halloween, orange leaves falling off the trees, a mild wind scattering them across the ground. Mark woke from his nap and opened the window to let in the cool autumn air. He did some stretches, legs in a split with his hands on the bottom of his foot, trying to empty his mind and relax like they did in yoga at school and definitely not think about everything he had to do before the ritual that night.

He heard the floor creak in the hallway and then a knock on the door. “Come in,” he said. The door opened and Jongin came in in time to see Mark swing his legs around to sit normally. 

“Whoa,” he said. 

“Uhh…”

“What were you just doing?” 

“Kind of yoga?” he said. “Kind of just stretches. We, uh, do it at school.” Jongin just stood there with his eyes wide and Mark felt his cheeks go red yet again. “So…”

“Oh yeah. Um. I wanted to ask if you knew how to do face paint with this costume makeup. I don’t know how to get it from the container to my actual face.”

“I can do that,” Mark said, already imagining sitting on Jongin’s thighs as he rubbed white face paint over his cheeks. He swung his legs naturally into his next stretching pose, an almost front split, and reached as far forward on the ground as he could. “Let me finish some ritual prep first and then I can come help.”

He looked up and Jongin looked downright hungry. 

“Wanna help?” He said. 

“What?”

“Like…come push on my back?” 

Jongin looked scandalized, but he entered the room to stand behind Mark and put his feet on either side of Mark’s chest. He leaned down. Big hands spanned Mark’s shoulder blades and pressed. Maybe a little too hard. His body immediately sank another two inches. He let out an aborted little whimper as his legs strained from his thighs to his knees and an ache stretched up his back. His dick ground right into the floor. A sizable shiver ripped down his limbs as Jongin braced a palm a little lower and kept pressing. 

Mark struggled to breathe. Another high, pained noise escaped his chest in a long whine. He heard Jongin suck in a rather wet gasp like he was trying not to drool. He struggled to relax for his own health. 

After what felt like forever, Jongin let up and Mark pushed himself mutely up off the ground, feeling a little fuzzy. He dragged his legs slowly in against a worrying ache. “You okay?” Jongin said. “I didn’t go too hard, did I? I haven’t done that in a while.”

“You’ve done that?” Mark said. 

“I am an athlete. And I used to dance.”

Mark rubbed the inside of his thighs, taking stock. His head felt blissfully empty. “You used to dance,” he said. “Well thanks.” 

Jongin stepped right over him to face him properly and forced Mark to face his beautiful brown eyes and strong shoulders again. “Seriously, are you okay?” 

“Uhh…yeah. Good stretch.” He suspected he might be a little hard, so he closed his knees. Jongin’s eyes dropped down and then back up to his face. Mark gulped. 

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Jongin said. 

Mark prepared all the charcoal, stones, and talismans for the ritual feeling dazed and more than a little horny. Which didn’t help when Jongin took him into the bathroom, handed Mark the palette of Halloween face paint, and sat down on the toilet looking up at him with a bedroom pout. 

“Right, so…” Mark said. “You just want to look mostly ghosty, right?” he swiped a makeup sponge over the white and rubbed it over Jongin’s cheek. “Whoa,” he said, staring at the difference between the stark white and Jongin’s tan skin. “This is going to take some work.” He propped a knee up on the toilet between Jongin’s legs and began dabbing the white on. “This stuff is shit quality,” he muttered. 

“Wait, are you actually good with makeup?” Jongin asked. “I just thought it’d be easier to have someone else do it.”

“I’m not any good,” Mark said. “Yeri’s done my makeup like twice and Donghyuck and I tried once in high school. Back when I started college I wore a little every day for like, three weeks and then gave up.” 

Jongin’s hand landed lightly on the back of Mark’s thigh and pulled his knee further onto the toilet seat. Mark completely missed Jongin’s face with the sponge. He tried to play it off but Jongin’s eyes twinkled up at him and he felt himself going red yet again. 

“White all over,” he murmured, “and then some black by your eyes? Maybe some green?” 

“Maybe kind of a skull look?”

“Like shadow in your cheeks and temples and eye sockets? I could do that.” 

Cradling Jongin’s face in his hands made the urge to kiss him almost impossible to resist. He licked his lips and tried not to notice the way Jongin’s eyes went right there.

“I’d like to see you in makeup,” Jongin said.

“Oh yeah?” 

“I’m curious. I already like the nails.” Jongin’s fingers brushed over the back of Mark’s hand where it held the pallet. Mark tipped his chin up on impulse and kissed Jongin right on the lips, a dry, chaste press, and then went back to smudging white all over him with his own cheeks flaming. 

For many long minutes, he stood and smudged, Jongin’s hands on the backs of his thighs, face upturned patiently for his hands. “You know you’re super gorgeous, right?” he said. 

“Yeah,” Jongin murmured. “I do.”

Mark didn’t know what to say, so he kissed Jongin again, coming away a little sticky with white this time. “I don’t think I have setting spray,” he murmured. 

“What’s that?” Jongin said. 

“Never mind.” 

Jongin’s hands squeezed his thighs. He braced against Jongin’s shoulders and kissed as gently as possible. “Now’s really not the best time for this,” Jongin murmured against his lips, so Mark got back to dabbing. He had to get all of Jongin’s neck, which was probably going to be just as hard as his face in terms of Mark keeping his self-control, and then all that black contouring. 

All the while, Jongin’s hands burned hot through Mark’s pants, wrapped so easily around the backs of his thighs, and then around the space right under his ass. As he leaned back to give Mark easier access to his neck and chest, the hands slid up and gripped his ass, or what little there was of it. Mark’s hands were beginning to shake. 

“You’re gorgeous too.”

Mark snorted, which sounded rude. “Sorry,” he said softly. Jongin got two solid handfuls of ass and squeezed. “Oh my god, don’t do this to me right now. I’m busy for the rest of the night.” 

Jongin yanked him ruthlessly forward till Mark’s hips slammed right into Jongin’s chest, legs spread awkwardly around Jongin’s lap and the toilet bowl. He yelped and leaned away, trying not to smear the face paint on his shirt. Jongin chuckled and kept him close. Mark’s jeans kept the worst of the friction off the place he wanted it most, but not completely. By the time Jongin let him settle right down on top of his thighs, he was annoyingly half hard under the denim. 

“You’re the worst,” Mark said. His voice shook a little so he tucked his head into Jongin’s shoulder like he could hide there. Lips brushed his ear. “Your makeup,” Mark said. 

“Yeah yeah.” 

He stood and worked through minimal black contouring with laser focus until Jongin looked relatively skull-like all the way down to his collar. “What about your hands?” he said. 

“I’ll wear black gloves. It’s whatever.”

Mark sat back down on his lap, both hands finally free. Jongin looked really weird in the makeup. “God, we’re on a toilet,” Mark muttered, and Jongin chuckled. 

“I’m gonna get my costume on,” Jongin said. 

“Oh, before you do that.” Mark led him into his room and handed him an amulet off the desk, an almost choker with a small blue stone etched with a vampire warding spell. “Uh. I made this for you.” 

“Doesn’t really go with my costume,” Jongin said with a smile. He settled on the bed as comfortable as anything. Any other night, Mark would have pushed him back onto the covers and finally gotten down to business. 

Mark frowned. “I mean, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

“I’m wearing it.” He pulled it carefully over his head, trying not to smudge his makeup. 

“I’ve got to change too,” Mark said. 

“Should I leave?”

“You don’t have to,” Mark said, and pulled off his shirt. He pretended he didn’t see Jongin’s eyes flick heavily over his body as he pulled on his nicest, most witchy shirt, something extra-long and made of heavy but silky fabric that hung in every contour of his body. It laced up a little on the chest and a little at the sleeves. Then he pulled off his pants. 

At that moment, Lucas threw open the door. “Hey guys, dinner was ready like fifteen min—oh fuck shit sorry oops wow.” The door slammed closed again. 

“I forgot about eating,” Jongin said, gently touching his makeup.

“Go ahead and mess up your lips,” Mark said. “I’ll do them again.” He stepped forward and tapped Jongin’s chin, coaxing him to look up and planting another kiss on his lips. 

“Now it’s on you,” Jongin said. A hand wrapped back around his thigh, on bare skin now, and Mark shivered. 

“Oh my god we shouldn’t be doing this for so many reasons.” He pulled away. It took a lot of effort. He had a pair of faux leather pants he needed to fight onto his skinny legs. Jongin left the room slowly, looking back over his shoulders. 

At the dinner table, Yeri wiped white face paint off his chin. And cheek. And neck. She shook her head in disapproval and he just smirked. “You’re getting awfully brave,” she muttered. 

She’d brought her most traditional witch hat, one with a pointier top and a flatter brim. Her hair was in pigtails. She had thick eyeliner and black lipstick. She looked adorable. The all black and silver boho chic kept it from getting too costume-y. 

“You two look the part,” Baekhyun mused. “Very very good.” He did something on his clipboard with a purple crayon. He’d gone full stage hand in a black turtle neck and pants, a black beanie over his pink hair. “Triple T won’t be downstairs till after dark, of course, but I heard them get up early. 

The house buzzed with activity. Lucas wore a shirt that looked five sizes too big and stretchy sweatpants he kept having to pull up, presumably so his clothes would fit in wolf form. Jongin kept wandering around in his costume, making the cape swish around corners. Mark put his head on his arms and watched him wander.

Yeri and Mark set up on the porch around five with their giant cauldron full of candy. The smallest child arrived way before the sun went down, one toddler in an Olaf onesie stumbling very slowly up the path with two parents, two grandparents, and what looked like an aunt and uncle. Yeri had the good sense to bring a bag of small chocolates for the children who looked so young that a sugar high might cause irreparable damage, and Olaf toddled away with two small Snickers in his pumpkin. 

Jongin came out of the house and wandered slowly about the yard with his hood low. Mark thought he looked ridiculous. Two small children cried.

A few minutes in, Baekhyun popped up from under the porch without warning and leapt over the railing in a movement that looked eerily like floating. “The desire for this house,” he breathed. “It fills the neighborhood.” He ignored the front door and crawled through the living room window. 

In the yard, Jongin looked up from under his hood, completely baffled. Yeri was up at the railing, looking this way and that to make sure nobody had seen Baekhyun’s spook crawl. A young mother and her toddler were just coming down the sidewalk in dinosaur costumes of various quality and effort, but both were too focused on their feet to notice anything. 

Then dusk arrived. The sun set with a beautiful peachy orange color through the woods at the bottom of the valley. Houses down their street and along the road in front of them were lit up in orange and purple. The small stereos hidden on the porch started playing ambient noises of a whispering wind and the creak of old beams. 

Scores of children flooded from the houses and collected into groups. Marvel heroes dominated the crowd, but also a good number of traditional monsters. Harley Quinn and The Joker came up holding hands and looking very awkward about it. As the evening got darker and darker, more and more struggled to make it past Jongin. 

“C’mon,” Yeri said, waving a group of children forward with a big smile. The grim reaper with his giant plastic blade paced slowly through the graves at the right of the path, cloak stirring mist behind him. The children balked. “Do you like Snickers?” Yeri yelled, holding up a full-sized candy bar. “Butterfingers?” 

The child in front in a classic Spiderman costume leaned forward like he was about to sprint for it. His friend Thor stared at the porch with his mouth wide open. Yeri dipped her hands into the cauldron and let the candy fall through her fingers and both kids booked it up the path for her. Mark thought he heard Baekhyun giggling inside. 

Before it was even wholly dark, Taemin appeared around the side of the house. Johnny was already with him, which meant Johnny had probably been sleeping in their house all day. He glanced Mark down the porch and gave him the most uncomfortable wave Mark had ever gotten from anyone. He almost flinched. 

Ten and Taeyong appeared behind, all in vaguely Dracula-like outfits with more historical accuracy. They settled in the almost absolute pitch shade on the far side of the porch, away from the dim spotlight on Yeri and Mark. Johnny flopped back on his loveseat, put airpods in his ears, and closed his eyes. 

Before they began their skit, Taemin leaned over the railing to Jongin. Across the space, Jongin heard, “Darling, that lovely necklace doesn’t go with your costume.” 

“It’s so nice though. Mark made it for me.”

Taemin’s head whipped to the side at an unnatural angle. He levelled an unsettling smile at Mark. Then he turned back to Jongin. “I’m sure he won’t mind if you put it on afterwards, darling. It’s bright blue and just really messes with the whole look.”

Jongin sighed and took it off, giving Mark an apologetic look. Mark gave him a laugh like he didn’t mind, fists clenched at his sides. The minute Jongin turned, he shot a glare at a very pleased Taemin.

“Head’s up,” Yeri murmured. 

The four teenagers from the night before hovered on the sidewalk just on the other side of their property line. They were dressed predictably, the boys in cheap scary masks, both up on their heads instead of over their faces, generic bloody-looking costume rags on their bodies. The girls were both clutching their arms and shivering in their matching ‘sexy’ angel and devil costumes.

In the darkness down the porch, Johnny let out a surprised yelp and then a small moan. The window above them slid open and Baekhyun stuck his head out. A whispered argument started. Taeyong put a hand on Baekhyun’s head and shoved him inside. Taemin slammed the window. 

The teenagers finally inched onto the property and started up the walk. Taemin leaned back in close over Johnny, a mass of dark, lumpy shapes down the porch hiding the white shirt from view. The kids kicked around at the fog. The mechanical hand by the graves snapped down as they passed and the angel screamed. 

An eerie note that definitely didn’t come from the wind and creaky boards CD sounded from inside the house. The teenagers hastened up the path as if ordered. 

“Uh,” one said as they reached the top of the stairs. 

“You guys look a little old to be trick-or-treating,” Yeri said to a lot of muttering. One of the guys squinted down the porch towards the shapes of Taemin and Taeyong crouched over a body. Ten passed like a shadow between them. Mark thought he heard Johnny grunt in discomfort.

The girls wordlessly held out their almost empty pumpkin buckets, both looking a little sheepish. Yeri the merciful put a Reese’s in both buckets. The boys didn’t even try. 

That was definitely a groan from down the porch. One of the kids took a couple steps towards them. 

All three vampires loomed out of the blackness, eyes red, faces ghostly pale, expressions unsettlingly dead. Taemin had a thin dark line trailing down his chin. The boy shrieked and fled down the steps with his friends behind him, faster and faster as the dark shape of the grim reaper rushed between the graves to intercept them.

Just as they reached the sidewalk, an enormous wolf-like shape lunged out from behind the tree. Before they could so much as scream, he vanished back into the dark and left them scrambling down the sidewalk in a jumble. Yeri put her face all the way in the candy cauldron and snickered. 

The window behind them slid an inch open with a slow squeak. “That’s not the last we’ll see of them,” Baekhyun hissed. The window slammed. 

It was still early in the evening. They hit a slow spot. Mark went inside to find a snack and dug all the way through the freezer to find the frozen garlic bread. 

“Where’ve you been?” Yeri asked when he returned from his battle with the old toaster. Mark handed her a slice of garlic bread. She looked a little shocked, but ate it. As Jongin passed the porch at a slow crawl, Mark slid the garlic bread between the boards. Jongin took it without realizing what it was, and then had no choice but to eat it. 

As he finished it, he passed too close to the vampires, Mark saw Taemin’s head snap up in alarm to watch the last of the garlic bread disappear into Jongin’s mouth. Taemin nearly ran over the miniature Harry Potter leaving the porch to get to him. 

“What is this game you’re playing, Mark?” 

“Time for a good old-fashioned prank war,” he said. 

“A what? A what?” Taemin rushed back over to his side of the porch where Ten was now crouched over Johnny’s body. They had a small, hissed conversation while Rey from Star Wars and her two-foot tall brother Kylo climbed the stairs and timidly grabbed a chocolate bar. As soon as they left, Taemin was right back in his face. 

“A dangerous game you play, Mark Lee,” he said, dark and imposing in his billowing cape, eyes shining a fiery red. “To challenge those with ages of dastardly deeds behind them to a ‘prank war,’ ohoho. But what could you possibly have to gain, dear Mark? Whatever could be your goals? Perhaps you think there is a reason to protect your Jongin? That he might know? That you think he may, ah, make a request of us?”

Mark breathed on him. 

“Fuck! Shit! Fuck!” He threw himself back onto his own side of the porch and writhed on the ground amongst the dead fall leaves like a dying cockroach. Ten and Taeyong left their posts. Johnny sat up. Baekhyun threw the window open and started angrily ordering everyone back to their spots. 

Yeri clutched her stomach and cackled hysterically. “Very nice witch cackle!” Baekhyun whispered down the porch. “Keep it up!”

Down in the yard, Jongin had drawn his hood back to squint in confusion at the action on the porch. 

Two Storm Troopers of diminutive size marched up the path, followed by two boys dressed as Naruto and Sasuke. When the troopers had gotten their candy, Naruto and Sasuke stepped forward. They stared down the porch towards the agitated vampires and barely got “trick-or-treat” out of their mouths as they stood and stared around. 

Mark recognized them suddenly as two of the boys on bikes who told stories after dark on the playground. “Where are you other two friends?” he asked without thinking. 

The boys both started, staring at him suspiciously. “Um, how do you know about—”

From behind the house came a sudden roar and the sound of screaming. The two boys raced down the porch and around the side of the house. 

“Should I go after them?” Mark said. 

“Lucas probably has it handled,” Yeri said. On the other side of the porch, six red rings glared motionlessly in their direction. 

Mark hesitated, then followed the boys around the side of the porch, fumbling with his charm bracelet for the little obsidian light charm. 

The two boys, who had been hanging over the back railing searching for their friends, heard his footsteps and freaked out, darting around the back of the house, probably heading for the stairs into the backyard. 

It was utterly dark in the back, but Mark saw the enormous shape of Lucas rise up out of the smoky graveyard. Four different voices cried out in terror, two from the bottom of the stairs and two from the bushes by the side yard. Before they could make it back up the steps, the obsidian charm bloomed in Mark’s hand into a dim orb of purple light. 

Someone fell down the stairs. Naruto and Sasuke scrambled towards the side yard. Four frantically running shapes made it around the side of the porch. Mark waited. Another series of shrieks told him that either the grim reaper or a vampire had gotten one last scare in. 

“This is going pretty well,” said Lucas. He stood at the base of the stairs looking totally normal in his baggy clothes except that his eyes glared a flat purple in Mark’s light like an animal’s reflective eyes. Large canine’s warped his smile. Excessively shaggy sideburns stood out on his cheeks. “They were trying to sneak into the graveyard back here.” 

Mark put out his light. “I wonder if they’ll come back,” he said. 

“I sure hope so.”

“I think we’re at least going to get the teenagers again. At least Baekhyun thinks so.”

“Can’t wait!” Lucas said. The dark shape of his body bulged and grew to a vast black shadow and he trotted off into the yard, tail swinging. 

In the kitchen, Jongin was gulping down a cool glass of water with mint leaves in the bottom.

“What are you doing?” 

“Taemin gave it to me. Who knew he could make mocktails?” 

“Fuck,” Mark muttered. “It’s gonna clean the garlic off your breath.”

“Wasn’t that a pretty mean trick?” Jongin asked softly.

“What, the garlic?” He felt himself begin to blush. “Uh…I don’t think so. It’s not like an allergy. They just don’t like it. Halloween is a good time for pranks, right? Haha.”

“I guess. By the way, have you seen Johnny?”

“I mean, not really. It’s dark.”

Jongin chuckled. “I was hanging around there just a minute ago. Like before the kids came down the side yard. And he’s just chilling with airpods in while they bite him. He’s so chill about it. It’s like…” he stared contemplatively into his minty drink. “It’s like it doesn’t hurt at all. He might even be enjoying it.”

“On a porch full of children?” Mark squawked and hurried towards the front of the house.

“Not like that!” Jongin laughed behind him. 

Mark shouldered Baekhyun out of the way where he was standing in the dining room and shaking with quiet laughter so he could wrench the window open and lean out. Taeyong glanced up from Johnny’s neck and had to quickly wipe something off his chin. “Mark?” he said. 

“If this is sexual in any way I will call the police myself,” Mark hissed. 

Taeyong jumped a little. “He’s fucking asleep, Mark. I’m eating my breakfast. Chill out.”

Johnny let out a small snore. Mark slunk suspiciously back into the house.

“It’s usually sexual,” Baekhyun said behind him. 

“What?”

“When they bring people home, the desire for sex is nearly indistinguishable from the desire for blood,” Baekhyun said. His irises glowed eerily pink in the dark dining room. “I’m getting none of that right now. They’re having way too much fun spooking people to be thinking about that.” 

“Oh fuck thank god. I got fucking scared for a minute there.”

The window slid open behind them. “Yeah, Mark. It’s not always sexual,” Taemin spat. “Keep your dumb stereotypes to yourself, huh? No need to be so jealous that your boyfriend wants the bite.” 

“He doesn’t want shit! Fuck off!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Baekhyun mused. Mark stormed off. 

The street had become well and truly crowded. “It’s like this every year,” Yeri said. “This is the place to come for kids who don’t live in neighborhoods with good candy opportunities. Like everyone who lives in the apartments in town or out in the farmland. Look at all these suckers.” The sweep of her hand included the vampires currently engaged in related activities on the other side of the porch. 

A couple more tiny ghouls climbed the porch steps. Groups kept bumping into each other on the sidewalk. Jongin had started lunging at the bigger children at a rate of about once every two minutes. Every once and a while, something huge would move in the shadows to the alarm and discomfort of the whole crowd. 

The scariest moments were the groups that came with flashlights. When they appeared, the vampires all ducked under their cloaks with alarm and didn’t come up until they left. Johnny’s airpods became awkwardly visible. One dad carrying a flashlight panned it over the crouching and trembling vampires and chuckled happily. “Great act,” he muttered over the head of his child. “Good commitment. I’ve been telling them creepy stories about this place all week.”

“Oh yeah? Have you?” 

The child’s mother was already helping her back down the stairs as the dad stood there with his enormous flashlight and chuckled. “Yeah, there was one going around years ago about how a bunch of people were found standing in the front yard with no idea how they got there.”

“…really?” 

“Uh huh. And then there were those cases of people waking up with blood loss and the last thing they remembered was wanting to come visit this house.”

“Whoa.”

“All that was way before you all got here,” the man said, waving his flashlight without really thinking about it. It swept across the other side of the porch to the sound of general hissing and people throwing themselves to the ground. The dad didn’t seem to notice. “Back when this place was abandoned. Have you ever seen anything weird here?”

“Um, gee, sir, I’ve only lived here about two weeks.”

He guffawed. “Guess you’ll have to be on your toes now, huh?” he headed down the walkway, still chuckling and waving his flashlight everywhere. Mark thought he saw a large furry shape hit the dirt behind a stand of bushes off to the right.

A smooth twenty minutes passed where everyone behaved themselves. Except Baekhyun, who could be heard occasionally humming notes inside. Dozens of children rushed up the path. 

“I’m kind of worried about running out of candy,” Yeri said. 

“I think there are more boxes in the pantry,” Mark said. “I’ll go check.”

He found Baekhyun crouched on the kitchen island, swaying back and forth and humming to himself. He passed quickly and quietly behind to go dig for candy bars in the closet. 

Back on the front porch, the vampires had paused their skit to all gather close over Johnny. He could hear the gentle hissing of a personal conversation. 

“More Butterfingers,” Mark said, ripping open the package and dumping it in. A child just coming up the path leapt the steps two at and time and practically threw himself into the cauldron. “Reese’s and Snickers too,” Mark said, waiting cautiously as the kid in the little Buzz Lightyear costume sifted his little fingers through candy bars the whole length of his forearm. 

A trio of zombies shambled up next, short enough that Jongin didn’t even consider lunging for them. The minute they were gone, the door creaked open and Baekhyun slunk outside. “What’s the problem?” he said.

“Problem?” Mark asked. 

Taemin appeared on the other side of Baekhyun.

“Johnny is spent,” he said. 

“Holy—what? Hold on.”

“We’ve gone a bit overboard. We must take him inside and put him to bed.” 

“Oh shit. Really?” 

Mark glanced around Taemin and saw Johnny sitting up and leaning heavily against the arm of the loveseat, Ten and Taeyong fussing over him. 

“He fell asleep and so could not warn us when he was feeling a little uncomfy,” Taemin said. “We will be feeding him of the candy bars and orange juice and putting him to sleep in our room.”

“Fuck,” Baekhyun said. “What about the skit?” 

“It will be handled.” 

Ten and Taeyong swept past with Johnny’s arms over their shoulders. Taemin grabbed a handful of chocolate bars and followed them inside. Jongin appeared on the porch with the sweep of a black cloak. “What’s going on?” he asked. 

“They’ve drained Johnny apparently,” Mark said. “They’re putting him to bed.”

“Oh shit, what?”

“He fell asleep,” Baekhyun said. “And didn’t tell them when to stop.” 

“He fell asleep,” Jongin repeated. “Wow.” 

That defensive jealousy reared its head in Mark’s chest again. He cleared his throat. “They bored him to sleep, I guess.”

“He must have done this loads of times,” Jongin said. 

“Yeah he’s over here every other week,” Baekhyun said. “I suppose I’ll have to replace Johnny on the couch. They’re not fucking biting me though.” 

Jongin stepped forward. “I mean, I could probably—"

Mark and Baekhyun cut him off at once. “Your part is more important,” Mark said. “We’re not telling them you know,” Baekhyun said. “I’m not dealing with that in the house. It’s bad enough with Johnny.”

He banished Jongin back to the yard and went inside to find a white shirt. 

When the vampires came back outside, they found Baekhyun already laying there. “What are you doing?” Taemin said.

“I’m your body.”

“We were going to…” Taemin glanced around. His red eyes narrowed at Mark down the porch. “We were going to ask Jongin.”

Baekhyun sat up. “Why?”

“You too, Baekhyun?” Taemin said. “Are you keeping him from me as well? Does he know, Baekhyun? And you know that he knows?” 

Baekhyun clamped his mouth shut and said nothing. 

“Taemin,” Mark hissed. “There are kids coming. Save it for later.”

The skit resumed with more tension than ever. Mark stood by the cauldron with his hands on Yeri’s shoulders, stiff and pouting up a storm as he watched Jongin pause by the vampire’s side of the porch to chat through the railing. “You’re so jealous,” Yeri murmured up at him. Mark gripped her shoulders a little harder.

He’d been imagining Jongin lying on that loveseat, neck bared, arms open, getting his neck sucked on by a trio of spooky freaks and enjoying it. Being scary took too much work. Mark had been imagining Jongin pinning him down and going hard and heavy, but if what he preferred was to be dommed by succubae and fed on by vampires, Mark wasn’t prepared. 

He crouched down to murmur in Yeri’s ear. “So if he’s a monster fucker…am I scary enough?” 

“Oh honey,” Yeri said, which told Mark all he needed to know.

All of a sudden, a wild scream came from the back of the house. All the parents and children in the front yard froze. Jongin strode gracefully between the graves to the side yard. Mark hurried around the edge of the porch. 

Baekhyun must have gone through the window again, because he was already out the back door by the time Mark got to the dark backyard. The overlarge, shaggy shape of Lucas faced-off with one of the ghoulish teenagers from the beginning of the night, who looked like he’d been trying to get in the back door of the house. With Baekhyun standing on the steps, looking totally human and yet both strangely alluring and threatening, the guy seemed to be reconsidering his options.

Not to be outdone by Baekhyun, Mark vaulted over the back railing. It was farther than he’d thought. He landed jarringly hard on his legs and let them crumple him onto his face. 

By the time he got up, Jongin had already flushed the other three teenagers out of the bushes with his plastic scythe. Three menacing shadows appeared in the corner of the yard, all emanating terror. The teenagers booked it right past Mark like they couldn’t even see him and raced through the neighbor’s bushes.

Lucas warped back into a human and doubled over laughing. “He had a wooden stake! Carved out of a broom handle!”

“I don’t find that very funny,” Taemin hissed. 

“He had a box of kosher salt!” Lucas howled. He lay right down in the dirt and cackled until it sounded like he was crying. “Baekhyun that was so good! Did you see his face when he came out of the house?” 

Baekhyun grinned. “When the guy fell over at the vampires coming around the side. That was really funny. And Jongin in the bushes! I didn’t even see those guys!”

“Man, we really scared them,” Mark said. He brushed dirt off his pants with his bruised palms and tried not to feel too dumb. Witches were not classified as monsters for a reason after all. He should have stayed on the front porch like Yeri and let the heavy hitters do the work. 

Yeri was trying to pretend she didn’t mind missing out. “You got ‘em real good,” she said dryly. 

“I didn’t get anyone,” Mark mumbled. “I’m fucking useless.” 

Without Baekhyun singing kids onto the porch, the stream of children eventually slowed to a trickle of only the oldest middle schoolers with the most freedom. Naruto and Sasuke showed up with their other friends dressed as Kakashi and Sakura. They seemed more than a little nervous, but Yeri and Mark gave them a smile and gave the two who hadn’t come earlier some candy. 

“See, they don’t truly believe,” Taemin said. “They let their fantasy run wild for the holiday but deep down they think they’re safe.”

“That’s what we want, isn’t it?” Mark said. 

The monsters on the other side of the porch all looked like they were coming down from a high. “I think I need to sleep soon,” Baekhyun said. He looked the most disappointed of everyone. Mark could imagine being blue-balled on his luring all evening was finally taking a toll, that letting them all go after reeling them in hadn’t been satisfying. 

When no one had shown up in twenty minutes, they hauled the cauldron inside. “Do you think we should take down the decorations before the morning?” Lucas said. “That made be the spookiest thing, if it all just vanished the night after Halloween.”

“Leave it for All Hallows,” Mark said. “Like the graveyard is here until the ghostly day is over and we’ll clean it up tomorrow night.”

“Mark, no one knows about All Hallows but you.” 

He shrugged and messed idly with his charm bracelet. All boring spells. One for warding off disease, one that occasionally reminded him to drink water, the one that warded away bad interactions. Nothing interesting. Nothing scary. 

“It’s ten thirty,” Taeyong murmured. “Still pretty early.”

“Pretty late you mean,” Jongin said. “I should be in bed but I’m fucking wired. I’m going to go take a shower.” 

“Me first please,” Mark said. “I’ve got a long night ahead of me and I don’t want to take time tomorrow.”

When he came back down with wet hair and dewy skin, Yeri was already packing up her things to go home. “Call me when you’re done,” she said. “I want to know how it goes.” 

“Yeah, let me know about the Bone-Knitting.” 

Jongin was already heading upstairs. 

As soon as the bathroom door closed upstairs, Taemin spun around from where he’d been standing against the window staring out at nothing. “Baekhyun has told me everything.”

“Oh great.” 

The vampires stood with their cloaks pinned at their necks, tall and imposing even in the kitchen light. They all smirked their fanged smirks. “We understand you feel possessive of your man since you got a chance at him first—”

“Hey, hey,” Mark said. “Let’s not—I’m not—like, possessive isn’t the right word.”

Taemin’s fanged smirk only widened. “It is his choice, Mark. You have no claim on him yet.” 

“He wants it,” Baekhyun added. “I can feel his desire for the bite. There’s really no reason to keep it from him.”

Taemin’s long teeth gleamed in the kitchen light. “I promise I will return him to you unharmed.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” The right course of action might have been to resort to threat, but Mark didn’t have the energy or the confidence. Even after he banished a devil, they didn’t respect him enough not to screw him over. “Just…let me talk to him,” Mark said. “Before you ruin my love life.” 

“I don’t want to date him,” Taemin said. “Don’t be silly. Are you worried he’ll just leave you once he’s had a taste of me? Your bond must be so weak, darling.”

“Well, yeah. I met him like two and a half weeks ago.” He rubbed his hands over his face. He hadn’t expected to feel tired so early. All the napping in the past few days had done little to prepare him for how energetic the evening had been and all the flip-flopping his stomach was doing. 

Taemin wrapped his arm through Lucas’s and told him how good and scary he was and Lucas beamed like it was his birthday. Mark went upstairs. 

At eleven thirty, Jongin still wasn’t out of the shower. Mark stood on the landing already in his jeans and ratty hoody with his box of ritual supplies. He’d need an hour to prepare the ritual and he needed to go find a spot and get it over with so he could come back and sleep. 

But could he come back and sleep? After the ritual was completed he needed to make the most of his hours of Death-Seeing. He’d probably be running around all night. Jongin would want to go to bed. 

And what would Mark even say. _I’m getting an inferiority complex about how not-scary I am. Please do not expect me to be creepy like Taemin. Please don’t leave me because I’m not scary like Taemin. Please don’t think I’m desperate._

Suffering from premature embarrassment, Mark decided to go set up his ritual instead of waiting to talk. He regretted it all the way into the woods but didn’t turn back. 

There was a large empty space of packed dirt by a pond some quarter mile into the woods and uphill. Mark made for that, shivering in his hoody and dragging his feet. The charm that was supposed to be keeping him warm was one of the ones that didn’t work very well, though it glowed sluggishly on his wrist like it was trying very hard. “Me too, buddy,” Mark said. 

He hated preparing for rituals, especially on cold nights. He set up his phone flashlight over the clearing, then put his ash in a little cart that he could drag behind him. He drew the nicest circle he could on the ground, then began to cris-cross it with lines. Then he drew the runes by hand and checked his work. Magic flowed slowly out of his shoulders the whole time, steady and dependable. 

Back in high school, Donghyuck probably would have been proud of him. He’d always been a little baffled and disappointed by how slowly Mark grasped magic. Never magical enough. That was Mark.

Mark stepped carefully out of the circle, trying not to mess up the lines, and began to prepare his body and his chant. It was a short and easy one. He’d been memorizing it for the past few days. He set up his obsidian in one quadrant of the circle, the shard of human skull in the another, his sacrifice of fruit and bread in the third, and a pile of herbs in the fourth, then steeled himself and removed his shirt and his charms. 

In the freezing air, he drew a sigil on his own chest with ashes, trying to tamp down the shivering to get clear lines. Then he smeared the dust over his hands and arms till they looked the absolute black of night shadows. As a final touch, he stood there and swore graphically about not remembering to turn the phone flashlight off before smearing ash all over himself. 

He wiped that off, checked to make sure it was after midnight, turned off the flashlight, and put the phone in his pocket before reapplying. His eyes wouldn’t get completely used to the dark. The new moon had come and gone while Mark was sick, leaving a pale waxing crescent in the sky above, not enough light to reach under the trees. 

When Mark thought he could kind of see the black lines of his ritual circle on the black forest floor, he stepped into what he thought was the center and carefully knelt, shivering violently in the October night the whole time. He closed his eyes, channeled his magic down into the earth as well as he could, and began to chant. 

He knew better than to open his eyes. Devilish forces slowly consumed the components in the circle around him with a sizzling sound and an acrid smell. He knew they would be gone when he opened his eyes. 

The chant was short. After that, he needed to maintain contact with the ground for ten long minutes with his eyes still closed, listening to the crackle and hiss of the ash and components filling with power around him. The magic through his body began to tremble like water over heavy bass, rippling and pulsing with movement till the ache of it grew uncomfortable. At some point the air and ground grew warm around him as if a tendril of hellfire had reached right under the surface below him.

He held on, felt magic pool up the back of his neck, curl through his head and settle into his eyes. He waited. It stayed like that for long enough that the ground began to grow cold again, and Mark knew the ritual was complete. 

He opened his eyes to a forest transformed into a light show. It was as if he had stepped onto a different plane. Everything that was dead lit up with its own light down the carpet of fallen leaves across the floor, just a soft white glow all around him. He stood and swayed, suddenly aware of an immense feeling of magic power that was not his own filling him. 

The sky above had opened. White shapes streaked slowly down from a vast swirl of energy like meteors rocketing towards earth as far as the eye could see. Already, dim white shapes flitted amongst the trees, shadows and shades climbing up out of the earth for just one day. 

Without grabbing any of his things, Mark staggered into the woods. His eyes led him towards the nearest shape, the shreds of a young woman in hiking gear passing through the trees. She tried to say something to him, but he couldn’t hear. When he shrugged, her form blurred and warped until he saw the form of her broken body lying at the bottom of a hill. She turned back into a shred of herself and wandered away through the trees. Mark moved on. 

It felt like being drunk. It felt like being high on some unnamed super drug. It felt like a devil walked in his shoes and led him through the trees till he nearly tripped on the fresh corpse of a bobcat. He grabbed by the scruff and started hauling it towards home. On the way he found a dead snake and hundreds of little insect corpses, many of value. Sometimes he just stood under the trees and stared at the white meteors in the sky, the light falling through the air and coming through the ground. 

The shade of a dead man shot in the head. The shade of a little boy lost in the woods. The shade of a great bear still roaming the hills. 

He reached the back of the house with his prizes and dropped them on the back porch, then stumbled off into the woods again to drag back a deer. 

When he returned, he saw that the lights in the house were still on. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time and blinked in confusing at the real-world light that seemed to blot out the light of the dead things. The lights in the house were still on, but he could still dimly sense three enormous undead presences in the house, and the dim, dim light of many other shades.

Mark turned to head back into the woods, but as he turned, one light on the second floor confused him. He paused and crouched in the dirt to give his brain a little bit of a break, squinting at the light and trying to figure out what it meant. 

Jongin’s room. Jongin was still awake and it must have been nearly three a.m. Jongin was awake in the house with Taemin. 

Mark lurched off the ground and immediately found himself on his hands and knees again. He picked himself up more carefully and stumbled up the back steps. His tread felt heavy. He paused against the back door and took stock of himself, shirtless and smeared with ashes, hands and forearms still mostly blackened, panting heavily and staring at everything so long and hard his eyes stung. 

He closed them, then sat down on the porch steps and took a few deep breaths. The surging of power didn’t let up, but the minute he decided to think, his brain cleared significantly. His body still felt awkward to maneuver, but more like he had added strength that he didn’t know what to do with than the lack of coordination he had when he was drunk. He opened the back door and stumbled up the stairs. 

On the first landing, he stopped in the bathroom to check and make sure he knew what he looked like and nearly shat himself. His eyes had turned a flat, milky white that glowed softly. “Oh fuck,” he whispered, on his hands and knees in the bathroom. He rushed into Jongin’s room to show him without thinking about what kind of intense shock he was likely to cause. 

Which was fine. Jongin wasn’t in there. 

“Mark?” he heard. He whipped around. Lucas yelped and jumped back. 

“Oh shit, sorry man,” Mark said, lunging forward to help Lucas up. Lucas scrambled into the wall with his hand over his heart. Mark stood with his ash-blackened hands raised to calm him until Lucas sighed and reached out to take Mark’s hand. 

“Yo, I’m sorry,” Lucas said. 

“It’s okay. I scared myself too.”

“No, not that. I mean that’s fine too, but like…I tried tell Taemin to hold off but he just ordered me out of the room and I’m still kind of scared of him.”

“Ordered you—what’s Taemin doing?”

“He talked to Jongin,” Lucas said weakly. “They’re um…doing the thing. I didn’t want to hang around anyway.”

But Mark’s defeated angst had vanished in the flood of the ritual’s power. Earlier in the evening, he probably would have just sat down in his room and cried, but vicious excitement rushed through him. 

Mark gave Lucas a wordless pat on the shoulder that probably left a heavy black handprint on his hoody and stumbled down towards the vampire lair, head filled with images of Jongin lying helpless and gasping on some velvet loveseat or big black four-poster with blood running down his neck. 

No one was in the bottom room. He crawled up the spiral staircase on his hands, excitement increasing with every step and power roaring through the channel along his arms till his fingers were nearly numb with it. 

The vampires glowed brilliantly in the lit room as Mark’s Death-Seeing picked them up, three points of undead power. He got an impression of black wallpaper with gold details, intricate trim around the walls, the same velvet curtains as the rest of the house, and an enormous bed with a quilted headboard in red fabric. 

Johnny saw him first, eyes widening as Mark appeared up the stairwell. Then Baekhyun rose from where he sat on the enormous bed. Ten and Taeyong lounged on a couch by the curved windows with slight flushes on their cheeks, both gazing at the action.

It was no damsel in distress that Mark found at the top of the tower. Jongin stood on his own two feet in the middle of the room, one hand clutching Taemin’s wrist helplessly in the air, the other wrapped around Taemin’s back to keep him steady as Taemin licked and sucked on Jongin’s neck. 

Jongin looked intrigued, even a little amused as he clutched Taemin to him almost like they were dancing, Taemin stretched up on his toes, clinging and trembling, little moans coming out every once and a while as he finally got his prize. The look in Jongin’s eyes was almost fond, his arm so solid and strong against Taemin’s thinner back. 

He didn’t look hurt nor overpowered, not swooning. His eyebrows scrunched in what might have been pain or pleasure, mouth open in a small gasp. Mark’s stomach dropped like he’d been flung over the side of a roller coaster, suddenly so desperately jealous and turned on that he could only shudder and stare. Then Jongin looked up and saw Mark kneeling on the top step. His jaw dropped. Taemin sagged in his grip.

“Taemin, I told you,” Mark slurred, coming out onto the black shag carpet on his hands and knees. “I told you—”

Taemin turned around with red still glistening on his lips, saw Mark there by the stairwell and backed up so fast he tripped under his own feet and fell into Ten and Taeyong’s legs even as they stood up on their couch and scrambled onto the windowsill. Mark stumbled to his feet and stepped forward and Taemin screamed like Satan himself had descended on them with his pitchfork raised. 

While the vampires tried desperately to wrap themselves in the velvet curtains, Mark reached out and wrapped a hand in Jongin’s t-shirt. But a dim shred of light distracted him. He stumbled over to the wall, still dragging Jongin behind him, and shut off the light. 

As if a reverse of what usually happens when someone turn off all the lights in a room, the vampires shut up, making only frantic little squeaks. Mark turned towards the ghostly form of an old woman sitting on the bed with blankets drawn up around her. She blinked around the room in absolute confusion. 

“Old woman,” Mark said. “On the bed. There’s a shadow here.”

“What?” Johnny said, getting up fast. He groaned and clutched his head, then sat down on the floor. 

“I think she, like, died. In this room,” Mark said. “Yeah. She’s just sitting there watching us.” He stumbled over to the window still dragging Jongin behind him and surveyed the neighborhood. “Whoa,” he breathed. Jongin tentatively rested his hand on Mark’s bare waist, but Mark was way too captivated to think about it. The lights still poured from the sky overhead like burning missiles. They wandered the neighborhood streets, shying away from front porches, except for the ones without any Halloween flair. Yet one wandered right up their walk. 

“The pumpkins,” Mark said. “We don’t have pumpkins. The ghosts are scared of the pumpkins. That’s why people make Jack o’ lanterns on Halloween.” 

“Mark, what?” Jongin said. 

“I can see dead people,” Mark said, and then burst into a hysterical giggle.

Jongin laced his fingers through Mark’s hand in his shirt and pulled it gently from his chest. Before Mark could worry, Jongin’s chest pressed up against his back and his lips against his hair. Mark melted, forehead against the window, eyes blurring all the lights flooding the nighttime world. 

“No wait,” he murmured. “I’m mad at you.”

“Mad at me? Why?” 

“I—oh,” Jongin kissed his neck and pulled him in a little tighter. “I’m mad because…”

“Should we leave?” Lucas squeaked. Mark hadn’t noticed him climbing up the stairs after them. 

“I think we should probably leave,” Jongin said. 

“No, I wanna fuck in Taemin’s room,” Mark said and then let out another embarrassingly hysterical laugh. 

“We’ll leave!” Taemin said. “I’m so sorry. Goodness, Mark. We’re out! Feel free to use the bed but please don’t make the old lady mad.”

“If you haven’t done that yet I’m sure we’ll manage,” Mark muttered. Jongin’s lips pressed so sweetly to Mark’s pulse. The noise of people thundering down the stairs came from behind them. “I like this actually,” Mark said. “Taemin has a better window than either of us do.”

“You’re getting black dust everywhere,” Jongin said.

“I’m mad,” Mark said, turning around. Jongin’s face was so distracting that he forgave him in an instant and kissed him hard on the mouth. 

“What are you mad about,” Jongin said when he had a moment, smiling a little against Mark’s lips like he wasn’t taking him seriously.

“What’s the deal?” Mark whined. “Why are you flirting with Taemin.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You said you’re a monster fucker. Am I not enough of a monster for you? You have to go do shit with Taemin?”

“They all bit me actually. He was the last one.” Mark pouted at him. Jongin was smiling. Mark glared with his glowing eyes, pulling harder on Jongin’s shirt. “Wait, are you actually upset?” Jongin asked. 

“Yeah.” 

Jongin looked stricken. “Oh no,” he said. He backed off and left Mark cold and shirtless and covered in ash against the window. “Of course you’re upset. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Oh man we totally should have talked first.”

“Am I…not enough of a monster for you?” Mark asked again without any of the petulance. 

Jongin blinked at him. “You’re not mad about…like I didn’t intend it to be like…sexy, but you’re not mad I let them…”

“I mean, that’s your choice, I guess,” Mark said. “I just…you know, if that’s what you want I can’t really, like, give that to you.”

Jongin cocked his head to the side. “Is what what I want?” 

Mark’s hands pressed together anxiously and dirty ash smeared between his fingers. “Like, scary monster-y sex. I don’t know.”

“Just because I’m a monster fucker doesn’t mean that’s the only thing I look for in someone. I liked you before I knew you could be scary at all.”

Mark took a deep, unsteady breath as he began to hope. He still wasn’t sure he believed it, that he had anything to offer this man besides weird magic powers. “Really?” He squeaked. 

“You’re precious,” Jongin said. “And this. Mark.” Jongin blew all his breath out for emphasis as he motioned to Mark’s glowing eyes and ash-smeared body. “Way hotter than vampires. Holy shit. What did you even do?” 

Before that burst of confidence could wear off, Mark shoved him onto the dark gray sheets on the bed and climbed over him. Jongin gasped hard and tugged him right down onto his body. The ghostly woman rolled her eyes, got out of bed, and wandered down the stairs. Jongin didn’t notice, of course, but he watched Mark’s eyes follow her with fascination. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “That’s so cool.”

“Does it turn you on?” 

“Um…like not automatically?” Jongin said. “It doesn’t work exactly like that. Just the existence of ghosts isn’t hot on its own, but the fact that you can see them just kind of makes you hotter—mph.” 

Mark licked right into Jongin’s mouth and sat right down across his hips. He thoughtlessly wiped his hands across Jongin’s shirt. Trails of dirt followed them. “Oh shit, sorry.” 

“Mark it’s really, really fine.”

“Taemin’s going to have to scrap these sheets.” 

Jongin pulled Mark down by the hair and kissed him hard. Mark whimpered into his mouth and squirmed for a better angle. They were about the same height, but the arms holding him close, the thickness of Jongin’s chest against him, the shoulders under his hands made him feel small. 

“I know you’re…” he tried and then pealed into a whine as Jongin tugged on his hair to get better access to his neck. Six bloody puncture marks were drying right under Mark’s lips, so he dragged his tongue across them and had to deal with a disgusting bloody tang. He felt Jongin stiffen and shudder under him and did his back to hold in his disgusted noises. “I know you’re a monster fucker,” Mark tried again, “so you like to get fucked by monsters, but like, I’m not sure I can give it to you like Hyuck’s mom can.” 

Jongin snorted. “No, Mark. I’m a monster fucker so I like to _fuck monsters_.” He rolled them over to pin Mark beneath him. “I’m gonna fuck you.” 

Mark straight up mewled. In the new position, he could see through the windows to the lights falling out the windows and the gleam of a dead vine through the trees. “The whole world is glowing,” he said. And then Jongin had one of his nipples in his mouth and he could do nothing but groan.

“So cute,” Jongin murmured. “Even like this. I don’t think I could ever actually find you scary.”

“Just hot?” 

“So fucking hot.” 

“I’ll take it.”

He squeezed his legs around Jongin’s strong waist just to feel his strength and writhed where he lay. Then he remembered that afternoon on the floor of his bedroom when Jongin helped him stretch and he let his thighs fall as wide as they would go on the bed. Jongin’s hands immediately went to them, pressing them wider and wider till he lay completely open against the bed. They ached in a wonderful way but his jeans felt close to tearing. 

“Pants off,” he gasped. Jongin’s hands flew to his fly like he’d been waiting for it. He went ahead and yanked Mark’s underwear off and Mark didn’t even think to complain until Jongin’s shirt rubbed against the underside of his thigh. “Oh wait, you too,” Mark said. 

“In a minute,” Jongin said. He crouched over Mark like a big cat and kissed slowly up Mark’s thigh, all tongue and teeth until he could press Jongin’s calf against the bed too. The red marks on his neck still stood out with a little bit of a glow, the remains of undead energy lingering there.

“How was it?” Mark asked. “Like, the bite? Was it as hot as you thought it would be?”

Jongin looked up sheepishly. “Um…yeah. Just about. But like…I’ve been thinking about it for a while so I think I overhyped it to myself. It’s not magically pleasurable but it doesn’t hurt.” He rubbed a hand down Mark’s stomach to right past his dick. It occurred to Mark that Jongin wouldn’t be able to see his eyes roll back while they were solid white. 

“Clothes off, please?” he said, starting to get shy. 

Jongin was just as glorious with clothes off as he was with clothes on, which Mark figured probably couldn’t be said for anyone else in the house but maybe Lucas. His athletic muscles rippled and bulged as he worked his unbuttoned shirt off. He drank in Mark’s gaze without a hint of shyness, pure satisfaction in the way he got naked. 

If Mark was on the lower end of average size, dick wise, Jongin was probably on the upper end, and thick. He reached out without thinking and squeezed. “Awesome,” he breathed. Jongin chuckled happily. 

“It gets the job done,” he said. 

“That sounds like something a dad would say,” Mark said. Jongin pulled out of his grip and hid in the sheets, laughing. “Sorry,” Mark said. “It really does.”

Jongin nuzzled his face right down into Mark’s crotch and wrapped those plush lips around his cock, and Mark could only whimper about it. He seemed to get as much out of pushing Mark’s thighs apart and testing how much they could stretch as Mark got being manhandled and taken care of. He stared at the falling lights outside the window and felt like he was dreaming. 

“Tell me about Hyuck’s mom,” he murmured. 

“What, now?” Jongin said, pulling up abruptly.

Mark giggled, throwing an arm over his face. “Yeah, now. I’m interested. I think it’ll be hot.” 

“I’m busy.”

“Get lube. Finger me.”

“Where do you think Taemin keeps his lube?” 

“Has to be close, right?”

They found it already in arms reach lying there in the sheets. “You think Johnny still has any of this in him?” Mark said. 

“Johnny? I don’t think so. I think that went in one of the vamps.”

“God, imagine fucking something cold,” Mark said. 

“Oh, I have.”

“Monster fucker.” He let Jongin handle the lube with his non-ashed hands. “Wait, not necrophilia, right?”

“No! God. No. Like…you know the Shape of Water movie?”

“Fish-monsters,” Mark said. “Somehow better.”

“And vampires.”

Mark pouted at him and Jongin responded by rubbing a lubed finger over his ass. 

“You really don’t need to be jealous,” Jongin said with a gentle smirk like he found it kind of cute. “Speaking of vampires,” he looked around at Taemin’s well decorated room. “We finally know what this place looks like. I am not disappointed.”

“Think Taemin’s going to be mad?” 

“You can never tell with him. He did offer.” He stuck a finger in Mark’s ass and Mark decided he really didn’t care where they were. This bed was bigger than either of theirs anyway and the whole room smelled like perfume. 

“So the succubus,” Jongin said as he worked a finger inside. Mark’s dick twitched and his lips quirked. “I met her in the grocery store and she invited me over. She looked like any other hot mom when I showed up, but within a couple minutes of being inside, I thought her hair looked weird out of the corner of my eye. A few minutes after that I could see her horns and she could see me staring at them.”

“She could tell you were turned on,” Mark breathed. “She could always tell.”

“Did you have a crush on her in high school, Mark?” 

“God no. I thought she was terrifying. I’d known her since I was, like, seven. But when Hyuck and I were hormonal teenagers, man, being around her was like a minefield of embarrassment.”

“Wow,” Jongin said. “No wonder your ex is the way he is.” He speared his fingers deep and hard into Mark and brushed close to where Mark needed them. The mark throbbed. 

“Further up,” he breathed. “Just a little further—oh god there it is you got it.”

“Could you feel it?” Jongin said. He wiggled his fingers a little inside, watching Mark’s reaction with fascination. 

“I can feel the pact mark, which is right next to it.”

“Woof that makes things easier. Keep telling me if I’m missing it.”

“Yeah yeah I will.” 

“So then she placed her order and…backed me into the kitchen counter. And then things turned kind of red and I just…went for it.”

“Bet she enjoyed that,” Mark said. He remembered that she used to complain about men being too fearful and whiny when she was just trying to have a good time. 

“It was intense,” he said. “Blisteringly hot the whole time and she really made me work for it.”

“I won’t,” Mark said. 

Jongin chuckled and added a hand to his cock. 

“Don’t look now,” Mark said, rolling his back with pleasure as Jongin began to pump both his hands in sync, “but there’s a spiderweb with like five dead bugs up in the corner of the ceiling.” 

“Mark! Not when I’ve got my fingers up your butt!” 

“God that sounds so unsexy.” 

Jongin leaned down to kiss him, presumably just to shut him up. Mark’s hands waved around a little, wanting to settle on Jongin’s face but not wanting to smear ash over his skin. He wrapped both hands around the pillow to keep them occupied. Jongin kissed him and worked lube deeper into his ass. “I’m guessing you don’t do this very much,” Jongin said. “If you didn’t know it was up your ass.”

“God, I hate fingering myself so much,” Mark breathed. “I love getting fingered though.”

“You need more time to adjust?”

“Probably won’t help. I’ve been in there a few times recently.”

Jongin made quick little circles deep inside Mark’s ass till his spine bent without his control. “You want me to fuck you like a devil, Mark?” 

“Ha. I wou-wouldn’t mind that.” 

Jongin shoved his thighs wider and wider against the sheets till he was completely open again and Mark’s eyes fluttered towards the window, watching the haze of white light outside. A condom packet ripped open and he heard the gentle crinkle of it being unrolled. Even before Jongin pushed in, Mark shivered and coiled like a spring, so ready for it. 

“Tell me what it was like to fuck Donghyuck,” Jongin breathed. 

“God, you wanna hear about sex with my ex?” 

Jongin groaned as he pushed in, but laughed at himself. “I’m just gonna think it’s hot, babe. I’m still pretty thrilled your ex is a devil.”

Mark couldn’t respond, mouth thrown open and gasping at the ceiling as Jongin cradled his hips and split him open. 

“He couldn’t fuck normally,” Mark finally whimpered. It was embarrassing, how completely broken down he sounded already. “He only went, like, torturously slow or so fast it fucking hurt.”

“What did you like better?”

“Fast!”

So Jongin smashed him into the bed and pumped in so fast that Mark’s vision wiped out for a while. “S-sometimes he’d go all, o-oh fuck—like hooves and horns. The whole…did I tell you he has hooves sometimes?”

“Oh fuck, holy shit,” Jongin gasped. 

“And then he’d—god, Jong, if—oh fuck. If you could angle like, just a little bit high—oooh shit that’s—oh that’s so good.” He grappled for Jongin’s arms, head stuck in a weird space where he was thinking about the weirdest moments of sex with Hyuck but looking at Jongin’s big brown eyes, fiercer and sexier than ever. Jongin’s cock slid right past the pact mark and slammed dead onto Mark’s happy spot. 

“There you go,” Jongin breathed as Mark keened into the empty air. “Let the whole house hear you.”

“Oh no,” he whimpered, but then Jongin raked a hand through the rune on Mark’s chest and he whined again. He stared up into Jongin’s warm brown eyes and got the double glint of his own glowing eyes reflecting back at him. He reached up and touched Jongin’s cheek and black smudged away from his fingers. Much of it had been rubbed away now, leaving his arms dirty and strange.

“God this is the hottest thing ever,” Jongin murmured. 

“Hotter than the succubus?”

“Uh…no, sorry.”

Mark snickered. “She’d be a shitty succubus if you said yes.” 

“God, I’m not going to last very long,” Jongin groaned. “I’ve been wound up since Ten bit me.” 

Mark gripped him by the arms for a moment. “Do not…again…with the vampires…”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I won’t.”

“At least not if I’m not watching.”

“Wait, what?”

“’s kinda hot.” 

Jongin stretched Mark’s thigh up till he whimpered with the burn and slammed in right to the hilt. He tipped Mark onto his side for an angle that let Mark feel every inch of slide and tested the limit of Mark’s flexibility. Mark hung on to Taemin’s sheets and let himself sob. 

Within only a few minutes of the new angle, Jongin jammed in as far as he could, leaning his weight down on Mark’s straining leg, and released with a satisfied sigh. Mark whimpered, still feeling right on the edge. Still sluggish and hazy, Jongin shoved him onto his back and slid his throat right over Mark’s cock, fingers right back inside till Mark sobbed and shook and came deep into Jongin’s throat. Jongin stayed on, giving and giving until Mark pushed his forehead away. 

They cleaned up in the bath that had caused so much trouble almost two weeks ago. The new pipes gleamed nicely in the dim bathroom light and Mark let Jongin wash his hair and kiss him slow and soft in the hot water. 

“It’s nearly four a.m.” Jongin said when they got out and wandered through the house in their towels. “I guess I’m not working tomorrow.”

Mark paused on the landing outside his room. The vampires, who were trying to sneak past to get back to their tower, yelped and scurried off, but he wasn’t looking at them. The ghost of the old woman and the ghost of an old man stood in the shadows at the end of the hall, arm in arm with their heads touching as they stared out the window. 

“We’ve got some pretty sweet ghosts,” he said. 

“Neato. You can come sleep with me if you want.”

Mark snuggled into Jongin’s arms. “I’m going to be awake till dawn actually. I’ll sleep when it’s light out and I can’t see the ghosts as well. I need to visit the graveyard still.”

Jongin made a little sad noise and Mark kissed him hard. “No more vampire bites while I’m away, okay?” 

“Keep that ass safe for me while you’re out,” Jongin said. 

But first Mark took a few minutes in his own room to spin in circles and hug his pillow. He felt like he was filled with helium. Power ballooned in his chest, an ache bloomed in his ass. Mark Lee was a new person. 

The empty streets of the town as Mark walked around in the early morning bustled with death. Shades of the town’s past generations stacked up in dim outlines. Newer shades glowing bright and older ones just fading away went door to door, each searching and searching. 

He found the telltale mist of undead magic swirling around in the graveyard, evidence of an enormous ritual already over and finished. He thought he felt what the monsters might feel every day, walking around with his glowing eyes, just one wrong move away from being known as something terrifying to everyone around him, a powerful and strange feeling, but not as powerful and strange as the phantom ache of a good fuck in his ass. 

In the dusky light before dawn, he strolled back through the woods to the place of his ritual and gathered all his things off the ground before kicking the leaves of the evidence and hauling everything back to the house to preserve his dead animals and find room for them in the shed. 

As the last noises of the vampires in their tower faded away and sunlight cut through the gap in the curtain at the end of the hall, Mark tugged off his pants and climbed into bed beside Jongin. He was awake just long enough to feel it when Jongin threw an arm over his waist and lay a kiss on the back of his neck, and fell asleep feeling warm and satisfied.

“Here he is,” Yeri said. She lifted a tea cup in a toast. Lydia copied her gesture and pushed a third cup across the table for Mark. “The big man on campus.”

“Tiny fish in a tiny pond,” Mark muttered.

Monday morning of November fifth had come before Mark was ready for it. He’d just put his All Hallows report on their professor’s desk and come for some much-needed caffeine. He’d spent all weekend working on it in Jongin’s bed, but had been well distracted for most of it and wasn’t sure he’d manage a good grade. “How did yours go?”

“Ta-da!” Yeri said. She pulled the little skeleton of a blue jay out of her bag. It sat up on her finger and tilted its head this way and that, taking in the scene of the back patio before school started on a Monday morning. There were a couple more bone companions around, and a couple other students who looked exhausted, everyone sitting around in the sunshine with their sweaters and scarves loose. If Mark had still had his Death-Seeing eyes, the whole garden would have been shining bright with last year’s crops now withered in the dirt. 

“You’d think writing a five-page report was hard,” Lydia muttered. 

“It’s certainly hard when you’ve got a dick in your ass,” Yeri said, wiggling her eyebrows. Mark made an affronted little noise and put his head on the table. 

“God I need more painkiller.” 

“Right. So Lydia, how did it go?” 

“Oh, he was lovely. We went to the little café on Market Street and then he took me for a long walk in the woods.”

Mark put his head up. “Wait, you went on a date?”

“Yeah, hold on,” Yeri said.

Lydia slapped a hand over her mouth. “You didn’t know? What did you mean then?”

“The ritual!”

“OH! Um.” She settled her hands back around her cup and turned red. “It went very well. It was probably quite like Mark’s Death-Seeing ritual except that I could touch and hear the spirits and couldn’t interact with the regular world.”

“Wow, okay. That actually sounds super scary,” Mark said. “I saw this giant bear spirit when I was in the woods and I was super fucking glad I couldn’t touch it.”

“Hold on—” said Yeri.

“And how did you deal with the spirits asking you questions?”

“It was so sad,” Lydia sighed. “Many of them don’t realize they’re dead and just want to find their way home.”

“The date,” Yeri cut in. “Who did you date?” 

“Lucas. He hasn’t told you?” 

Yeri and Mark both sat their gaping at her. “I haven’t really talked to anyone besides Jongin in days,” Mark said. “I think I freaked everyone out pretty hard.” 

“I never talk to Lucas if I’m not with Mark,” Yeri said.

Lydia pouted. “Well, ask him about it,” she said. “Yeah, we went on a date.” 

Yeri leaned forward looking a little anxious. “Did you tell him you’re…” 

“Trans? Yes.”

“And how did he react?” 

She shrugged. “Pleasant surprise. Didn’t really seem to care.”

“He’s such a good boy,” Yeri said. “Wow.”

Mark grinned into his tea. “He’s the sweetest. I think you’ll be good together.” 

Lydia nodded. “The cards told me we’re very compatible.”

Mark caught Yeri rolling her eyes behind her teacup and Mark smothered a smile in his hand. Lydia’s lips twitched in a little grin. 

Mark asked that night when he walked into the kitchen and Lucas flinched a little. “You know Lydia is scarier than I am, right?” he said. 

“What? Oh dude, I’m not scared of you. You just startled me. I’m really worried about this oil.” Something sizzled and popped on the stove as Lucas tried to reach in with his tongs. He kept yanking his hand back a few inches and cringing. “Wait, what about Lydia?”

“She says you went on a date.”

Lucas’s cheeks flushed. He grinned. “Yeah! She was asking about what I do in the woods so I offered to show her, and that kind of turned into coffee and like…yeah I was pretty sure it was a date but I didn’t want to ask. Thanks for clearing that up for me.”

Jongin got home and came into the kitchen with a big smile. “Guess what came in,” he said and kissed the top of Mark’s head. He dropped a giant cardboard box on table. “It’s Donghyuck’s knives.”

Mark grimaced. “Oh. Oh fuck he’s coming back for those isn’t he? Fuck.” 

“I can always get his mom to come get them.”

“No no,” Mark said quickly. “Just…please don’t let him open those while he’s here. I’m worried he’ll just start throwing them at me and he’s super good with knives.”

“Kind of scary how you know that.”

“He’s always played with knives, ever since I met him. He like, collected them in middle school and had this weird knack for sneaking them into class. Teachers fucking hated him. I think his mom kept giving them to him just to cause chaos and then she’d deny knowing that he had them.”

“And they both bought my fanciest knife set,” Jongin said. He wrapped his arms around Mark’s neck from behind and rest his chin on Mark’s head. “Like mother like son I guess.” 

Donghyuck walked right through the kitchen door and every burner on the stove roared to life. “I’m here for my knives,” he said over the sound of Lucas’s screaming and Jongin’s frantic shuffle away from Mark. Mark, long used to both Donghyuck’s fire magic and his party trick of teleporting through locked doors, just sighed. 

“They’re um, right here,” Jongin said, pushing the box forward. Donghyuck whipped out an enormous dagger with an unearthly glint to it and carefully cut the tape. Lucas and Jongin looked terrified. Mark stared tiredly at the box and waited for it to be over. 

“Yeah, nice,” Donghyuck said. He sheathed the dagger back at his hip and pulled the big box of knives out of its packaging. He read over the label, tucked it under his arm, and walked out with a wave. 

“Wait, you gotta sign for it!” Jongin said and ran upstairs. Donghyuck, smooth exit ruined, leaned back against the kitchen doorway and stared morosely at the ground. 

“So, how’ve you been holding up?” Mark asked. 

“Just had a hundred-mile hike out of hell to explain to my superiors, that’s all,” Donghyuck said. “It was a pretty nice break actually. What about you?”

“I was super sick for like four days.”

Donghyuck nodded, tongued shoved into one of his cheeks with discomfort. “Anything you want to say to me about that?”

“Not really.”

“Fuckin’ fantastic.” 

Jongin came back into the kitchen with the form for Donghyuck to sign, eyes definitely on the little horns poking out of his hair. Donghyuck glanced up and caught him staring. “I look like my mom, I know,” he said breezily. “It’s a blessing and a curse.” He handed the pen and paper back. “Let me know if you need her number.”

“Oh no, it’s really fine.” 

Donghyuck gave Mark one last long look like he was thinking about saying something, but then silently hefted his box of knives and walked out. Mark sighed through his nose and followed him. On the steps, he found Donghyuck checking his phone as casual as anything. He looked up when Mark came out behind him and just shook his head. 

“What?”

“You’re like, actually a good witch now. It’s weird.”

“Wow, thanks.” 

Donghyuck pursed his lips and stared around the graying yard like he was sad he couldn’t burn it. “Have fun with your new man, babe,” Donghyuck said. “I’ll come by next time I need something.” 

As he stepped onto the sidewalk, his horns disappeared from his hair and he became the kid Mark new in high school for just a moment. Still, Mark expected him to step onto the street and sink right through the concrete and off who knows where, but he just stood there looking awkward and small until his Uber arrived. He shuffled into the passenger seat and gave Mark one last wave before the Uber slid down into the concrete and vanished.

“In broad daylight,” Mark muttered to himself. “Stupid.” But he went inside feeling somehow warm and forgiven.

In the late evening, Mark and Jongin came down to the first floor in coats and heavy boots, both carrying baskets, and found Taemin just wandering into the living room with a familiar set of dark gray sheets, fresh out of the dryer. He walked over to where Ten and Taeyong were snuggled around each other and climbed on top of them, warm sheets engulfing all of them like a cocoon. 

“You got those clean then?” Mark said. 

Just the top of Taemin’s messy hair and one red eye appeared over the top of the sheet. “Hm?” He stared cautiously at Mark. Ten’s face appeared below his as he extracted himself from the worst of the blanket tangle. Only a little of Taeyong’s hair was visible against Ten’s neck.

“Like, I got a lot of ashes all over it. And other…stuff.”

“These sheets clean off so nicccely,” Taemin said. “Yes, we have to clean them regularly anyway. Your ashes are not the worst mess to ever grace that bed.”

“Awesome,” Mark said. “That’s…wow.”

“Darling, watch your elbows,” Taemin said. Taeyong made a soft noise deep in the pile and there was a small shuffle. “So very sharp,” Taemin said. 

“They’re cooling off too fast,” Ten said.

“Wait, do you guys get, like, cold?” Mark said. 

“Not at our own temperature, but everyone enjoys warm sheets.” 

Jongin put down his basket and lay himself out across the top of the vampire pile to some uncomfortable squeaking and muttering. Taemin glanced fearfully back at Mark, who just sat down in one of the chairs and watched with a grin. 

“So warm,” Taeyong moaned. 

“Y-yes it is, quite,” Taemin said. “But Mark…”

“It’s okay,” Mark said. “I’m like, over it. That’s all totally friendly, so it’s cool.”

“What if I were to bite him?” Taemin challenged. 

“His choice.”

“I’m good for now,” Jongin said. Taemin heaved a sigh. Jongin rolled over with an exaggerated struggle, trying to get comfortable on top of the pile of grunting and wheezing vampires. 

“You’re not a small person,” Ten grumbled from the bottom of the pile. 

“But he is warm,” Taemin said. 

“Well I’m not getting any of that, am I?” 

“My arm is so numb.”

“Just move it, Taeyong.”

“I can’t!”

Jongin slid off and the vampire pile re-inflated with a triple gasp. “Off into the woods, are you?” Taemin said. He pet Ten’s cheek as he nodded at their baskets. “Little gathering date?” 

“Yup. I don’t think I’ve got much longer to find stuff, so Jongin’s helping me tonight.” 

“How perfect,” Taemin murmured. Now that the Death-Seeing ordeal was over, Taemin seemed to be taking most of the credit for finally getting Jongin and Mark together. “So cute. Come home safe, children.” 

As they walked off into the forest, Jongin pushed his fingers between Mark’s and led him along, swinging their hands. “I’m beginning to think we’re all part of Taemin’s coven here,” Jongin said. 

“Or Baekhyun’s coven. Let’s be real.”

They didn’t get very far into the woods before Mark’s back got smooshed into an unforgiving tree trunk and Jongin’s tongue was in his mouth. “I really got—mmph.” He got his hands in Jongin’s soft hair and lost track of reality. 

Jongin pulled away and he let out a soft whine. “Don’t you need to gather stuff?” Jongin laughed, pulling him off the tree and further into the woods. Mark stared around at the dry ground, brain slowly rebooting. Jongin pulled a regular weed right out of the ground. “Is this useful?” 

“Huh? No. That’s…like…grass, I don’t know.”

Jongin tossed it back on the ground and wandered off, ass barely making an imprint on the back of his jeans. But those thighs though. He hoped Jongin didn’t notice that his butt was right in the center of the shadow in the beam of Mark’s flashlight. 

He felt almost like a regular dude for a bit, wandering through the woods with his regular dude boyfriend who had an actual income and a professional sports career. Regular dude didn’t feel that great to Mark anymore, so he dug some woody tubers out of the ground with his bare hands and drew a spell of warming on the back of Jongin’s hand with charcoal so he could watch Jongin’s eyes sparkle with awe. Jongin searched for mushrooms and Mark found herbs, and every so often they bumped into each other like two leaves drifting in a slow stream. 

“Hey look,” Mark said, pointing his flashlight up into a leafless tree. “Mistletoe. That’s great in a lot of medicinal brews.”

“Not romantic brews?” Jongin said. 

“What? No. Why?”

He looked up just in time for Jongin to place a hand on both his cheeks and kiss him deep and slow under the mistletoe. His hands found Jongin’s waist and they stood there kissing and kissing. 

Jongin finally pulled away and Mark swayed, a little dazed. 

“How are we going to collect the mistletoe?” Jongin said, staring up the smooth trunk and up towards the clumps of mistletoe in the top branches. 

Mark struggled to remember what he usually did. “Throw rocks at it?”

“Or we could come back with Lucas tomorrow.” 

“Uh. Yeah.” He wrapped himself around Jongin’s waist till Jongin turned at a good angle for Mark to lean forward and kiss him again. There would be a couple weeks yet to come out into the woods at night, and a long time yet to come to kiss Jongin in the dark. 

“No more gathering tonight, right?” Jongin murmured into his mouth. 

“Let’s go home and, um…”

“You sure your ass is ready for that?” 

Mark squirmed. “Oh my god, I’ll just take another magic bath. Don’t worry about my ass.” 

“It’s my job to worry about your ass.” He gave it a good grab. They headed home. 

“What if I ever decide to become a witch?” Jongin asked as the lights from the neighborhood began to appear through the trees. 

Mark squeezed his hand. “It’s an enormous commitment, dude. Way more than you’re thinking. Your life already has a lot of stuff going on.” 

“Yeah, but what if?” 

Mark bust out into giggles. “Then I guess I’ll call Donghyuck over for you. Or his mom.” He nearly dumped his basket out when Jongin gave him what was probably a playful shove with his more muscular teammates. “Whoa there, I’m, like, delicate.” 

He really did drop his basket when Jongin backed him into a tree and kissed him till he was half-hard and shivering for more in the November night. But Jongin helped him gather it all up and held his hand all the way home. A witch and his man. The world had never felt so bright.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I've been informed that a lot of wine actually isn't vegan, so please don't take Jongin's word on it. I'm not changing it because I'm sure both Jongin and Mark in this fic both assume wine is vegan and I like the joke too much. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Come visit me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/GinforInk).


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